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THE  MAKING  A 
UNMAKING 
DULLARD 


THE 


By 

Thomas  Edward  Shields,  Ph.D.,  LL.D, 

Associate  Professor  of  Psychology  in 
the  Catholic  University  of  America 
i)  n  CJL  Author  of 

(j  /^  f          «-The  Education  of  Our  Girls" 


THE      CATHOLIC     EDUCATION     PRESS 

WASHINGTON,      D .      C . 

All   rights  reserved. 


Imprimatur. 

©  JAMES    CARDINAL   GIBBONS 


COPYRIGHT,  1909,  BY  T.  E.  SHIELDS. 


£o  tbe  /HMsunOerstooD 
CbilOren 

Who  are  reached  the  stone  of  dis- 
couragement instead  of  the  bread 
of  hope  and  who  are  branded  "dull 
and  backward"  when  laid  upon  the 
Procrustean  bed  of  closely  graded 
schools 

(Ibis  3Soofc 


ID  JDebicatefc  in 
Sgmpatby 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I  STUDEVAN'S  OMADHAUN     .     .  27 

II     A  DIAGNOSIS 36 

III  THE  MENTAL  RECORD    ...  45 

IV  CAUSES     OF     DULLNESS     IN 

CHILDREN 53 

V     ALTERNATING  PHASES  OF  DE- 
VELOPMENT     68 

VI     THE     ATYPICAL     CHILD     IN 

SCHOOL 73 

VII     EARLY   MEMORY   PICTURES     .     80 
VIII     THE  MAKING  OF  A  DULLARD     92 

IX     INTO  THE  DEPTHS 98 

X     THE  AWAKENING     .....   107 
XI     THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE 

NUMBER  CONCEPT     .     .     .118 
XII     DEVELOPMENT     OF      SPATIAL 

RELATIONSHIP 123 

XIII  CONTACT  WITH  NATURE    .     .   138 

XIV  GERMINAL  TRUTHS     .     .     .     .143 
XV     THE   GERMINAL   CONCEPT   IN 

MECHANICS  ,   150 


Contents 

XVI     THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE 

LEVER 155 

XVII     SENSE  EXPERIENCE  AND  LIT- 
ERATURE     162 

XVIII     A  RAY  OF  HOPE 170 

XIX     JUDICIOUS  PRAISE 177 

XX     THE   DANCE   OF   THE   MOON- 
BEAMS     184 

XXI     A  DAY-DREAM 190 

XXII     A  XEW  PROBLEM 196 

XXIII  THE  BUILDERS  OF  SCIENCE     .  205 

XXIV  REDISCOVERING      FUNDAMEN- 

TAL TRUTHS 211 

XXV     A   SUCCESSFUL  INVENTION     .  219 

XX VI     A  FAMILY  WETBLANKET     .     .  225 

XXVII     THE  FIRST  TRIUMPH     .     .     .229 

XXVIII     THE  PARTING  OF  THE  WAYS  233 

XXIX     ILLUSIONS 242 

XXX     TRANSITORY  PHASES    ....  249 

XXXI     SELF-RELIANCE 255 

XXXII     LEARNING  TO  READ     ....  263 

XXXIII  A  WIDENING  HORIZON    .    .    .270 

XXXIV  THE  TURNING  POINT     .     .     .  276 
XXXV     A  RESOLVE  282 


PREFACE 

Though  recent  progress  in  educational  the- 
ory and  practice  has  for  the  most  part  kept  in 
view  the  normal  child  and  the  development  of 
normal  faculties,  it  is  gratifying  to  note  a  grow- 
ing interest  in  those  less  fortunate  children 
who,  for  one  reason  or  another,  fall  below 
\vhat  might  be  called  the  level  of  school  in- 
telligence. That  the  organism  should  have  its 
pathology  no  less  than  its  physiology  is  the 
plain  requirement  of  common  sense  as  it  is  also 
a  scientific  necessity.  Likewise  it  is  clear  that 
psychology  of  the  normal  mind  must  find  its 
counterpart  in  the  study  of  mental  disease. 
And  now  that  the  advance  of  knowledge  has 
made  possible  a  more  thorough  diagnosis  and 
a  more  successful  treatment  of  those  defects 
which  hinder  the  growth  of  the  mind,  it  seems 
reasonable  to  hope  for  something  like  a  sys- 
tem of  educational  therapeutics  which  will 
turn  toward  the  school  many  children  who 
would  otherwise  go  their  way  to  the  asylum. 


8  Preface 

The  Catholic  Church  from  the  earliest  times 
has  put  forth  the  most  earnest  efforts  to  bring 
the  blessing  of  education  within  the  reach  of 
those  to  whom  nature  seemingly  refused  the 
power  or  the  opportunity  of  learning.  In 
Rome  especially,  the  Sovereign  Pontiffs  have 
been  careful  to  provide  institutions  for  the 
blind,  the  deaf,  and  other  classes  of  defective 
children.  The  Holy  See  has  also  blessed  and 
encouraged  those  associations  of  unselfish  men 
and  women  who  have  given  their  lives  to  train- 
ing such  children  in  knowledge  and  virtue. 
And  it  is  pleasing  to  see  upon  the  pages  of 
educational  history  the  names  of  many  indi- 
vidual Catholics  who  have  made  valuable  con- 
tributions to  the  method  of  treating  the  less 
gifted  or  hopelessly  dull  and  backward  pupils 
to  be  found  in  every  school. 

The  work  which  Dr.  Shields  has  prepared  is 
certain,  in  my  judgment,  to  interest  and  assist 
all  those  who  are  concerned  with  the  education 
nf  defectives.  His  study  of  the  dullard  is 
based  on  a  thorough  psychological  insight ;  but 
what  is  more  important,  it  is  evidently  inspired 


Preface  9 

by  a  hearty  sympathy  for  the  parents  and  teach- 
ers upon  whom  the  care  of  such  children  must 
devolve.  I  sincerely  trust  that  this  careful 
analysis  and  the  numerous  suggestions  which 
are  offered  in  his  pages  will  be  at  once  an  en- 
lightenment and  a  stimulation  to  his  readers. 
The  book  has  been  cast  in  the  form  of  a  dia- 
logue which  permits  an  easy  presentation  of 
the  author's  ideas  while  it  offers  full  scope  for 
the  discussion  of  some  delicate  problems  in 
psychology.  I  feel  sure  that  in  thus  survey- 
ing the  subject  from  various  points  of  view 
Dr.  Shields  will  not  only  open  up  new  lines 
of  thought  where  much  serious  thinking  is 
needed,  but  will  also  create  for  the  dullard  a 
sympathy  at  once  sincere  and  intelligent  that 
will  go  far  towards  making  of  these  unfortu- 
nate little  ones  useful  men  and  women. 

D.   J.   O'CONXELL, 

Rector,  Catholic  University. 


INTRODUCTION 


The  dullard  is  the  trial  of  every  teacher,  and 
he  is  the  prolific  source  of  heartache  and  hu- 
miliation to  his  parents.  His  days  are  eked 
out  in  discouragement  and  the  future  stretches 
out  before  him  a  barren  waste  with  no  ambi- 
tions beckoning  to  him  and  no  ray  of  hope  to 
illumine  his  path.  And  yet,  he  has  a  soul  to 
save  and  a  life  that  must  be  lived  out  among 
his  fellows,  whether  in  honor  or  in  dishonor. 
-Misunderstood  by  his  companions,  abused  by 
his  superiors,  held  up  to  the  school  as  an  ex- 
ample to  be  avoided,  the  butt  of  ridicule  for 
the  smart,  jeered  at  by  the  thoughtless  and  the 
ill-bred,  with  all  the  currents  of  life  soured  and 
turned  back  upon  their  source,  the  dullard  too 
frequently  finds  his  way  to  the  Juvenile  Court 
and  from  thence  he  passes  on  to  recruit  the 
ranks  of  the  vagabond  and  the  criminal. 

The  dullard  is  sometimes  born  to  his  low 
estate,  but  he  is  more  frequently  the  product 
of  mistaken  educational  methods  in  the  home 


12 


Introduction. 


and  in  the  school.  He  is  not  a  rare  visitant; 
his  number  is  increasing  rapidly,  particularly 
in  the  schools  of  our  large  cities.  According 
to  conservative  estimates  ten  per  cent  of  the 
children  attending  the  public  schools  of  Xew 
York  City  must  be  classed  with  the  dull  and 
backward.  Dr.  Groszmann.  a  competent  au- 
thority on  the  matter,  is  responsible  for  the 
statement  that  there  are  from  six  to  seven 
atypical  children  in  every  schoolroom  in  New- 
ark, X.  J.  Those  two  cities  do  not  constitute 
a  striking  exception  in  the  number  of  these  un- 
fortunate children  to  be  found  in  the  school 
population. 

People  of  philanthropic  tendencies  are  much 
exercised  over  this  deplorable  state  of  affairs 
and  they  are  ready  with  various  remedies,  such 
as  more  frequent  bathing,  more  abundant  food, 
sanitary  housing,  settlement  work,  fresh  air 
excursions,  etc..  but  there  is  little  hope  of 
reaching  a  permanent  cure  until  the  case,  with 
all  its  difficulties,  is  fully  understood  and  the 
contributary  causes  laid  bare. 


Introduction.  13 

It  should  be  observed  at  the  outset  that  the 
educational  failure  of  our  present  school  sys- 
tem is  not  confined  to  dull  and  atypical  chil- 
dren. Recent  evidence,  such  as  that  furnished 
by  the  West  Point  examinations  and  by  the 
Boards  and  Committees  appointed  to  investi- 
gate public  education  in  various  parts  of  the 
country,  points  to  the  fact  that  there  is  some- 
thing- fundamentally  wrong  with  the  school 
system,  since  it  is  grinding  out  dullards  in  ever 
increasing  numbers  and  failing  to  bring  even 
the  brighter  children  up  to  a  reasonable  effi- 
ciency in  those  matters  which  constitute  the 
staple  of  the  curriculum. 

Educationists  of  varying  degrees  of  profi- 
ciency and  of  all  shades  of  pedagogic  belief 
are  at  work  on  the  problem.  Child  study, 
genetic  and  applied  psychology,  and  sociology 
have  each  made  its  contribution.  Remedies 
have  also  been  offered  by  the  advocates  of 
moral  and  religious  training,  of  physical  cul- 
ture, of  athletics  and  of  industrial  and  tech- 
nical education.  The  literature  of  the  subject 


14  Introduction. 

is  growing  rapidly,  but  it  may  be  questioned 
whether  we  are  as  rapidly  approaching  a  sat- 
isfactory adjustment  of  the  school  to  the  needs 
of  the  child. 

This  book,  it  is  believed,  may  contribute 
something  towards  the  solution  of  these  prob- 
lems. It  is  cast  in  popular  form  in  the  hope 
that  it  may  reach  parents  and  the  pupils  who 
need  its  message  as  well  as  the  more  technically 
trained  workers  in  the  field  of  education. 

The  story  of  Studevan's  omadhaun  is  in  no 
sense  a  creation  of  the  imagination,  nor  are  its 
facts  gathered  from  various  sources  to  be 
moulded  into  one  for  the  purposes  of  pedagogi- 
cal exposition.  The  story  in  its  entirety  is  a 
faithful  transcript  of  the  record  that  was 
burned  into  the  heart  and  brain  of  the  omad- 
haun and  read  by  himself  years  after  he  had 
fought  his  way  back  to  the  company  of  normal 
and  intellectual  men.  It  has  a  message  of 
courage  and  hope  for  the  dullard,  who  will 
probably  be  the  only  one  to  fully  appreciate 
its  force,  but  it  can  hardlv  fail  to  awaken  in 


Introduction  15 

the  hearts  of  parents  and  teachers  a  deeper 
sympathy  for  these  unfortunate  victims  of 
mistaken  educational  methods  and  to  give 
a  keener  insight  into  their  condition,  nor 
will  the  book  b'e  found  devoid  of  suggestions 
for  those  who  are  engaged  in  the  elaboration 
of  methods  and  the  shaping  of  educational 
policies. 

It  is  vain  to  treat  symptoms  instead  of  dis- 
ease, yet  nothing  more  is  possible  until  we 
fully  understand  the  causes  of  the  evils  of 
which  complaint  is  made.  The  problem  is  usu- 
ally approached  from  the  outside.  The  dull- 
ard is  observed  as  if  he  were  a  frog  or  a 
tadpole  by  the  educationist  who  has  no  light 
to  guide  him  but  that  derived  from  the  mem- 
ory of  successful  school  days  and  a  brilliant 
educational  career.  Dr.  Studevan  here  pre- 
sents the  frog's  point  of  view  and  he  has  some- 
thing to  say  which  is  well  worth  listening  to, 
even  if  you,  in  your  superior  wisdom,  should 
find  reasons  for  differing  from  his  conclu- 
sions. 

The  problems  discussed  in  this  book  have  a 


1 6  Introduction 

bearing  also  on  the  education  of  normal  chil- 
dren. It  is  more  than  probable  that  the  same 
causes  which  are  producing  the  ever  increas- 
ing number  of  dullards  are  also  operative  in 
the  production  of  the  less  aggravated  forms  of 
the  malady  exhibited  in  the  general  retardation 
of  public  school  pupils  to  which  reference  has 
just  been  made.  When  these  causes  are  fully 
understood,  we  shall  not  have  far  to  seek  for 
effective  remedies. 

The  average  child  spends  only  a  small  frac- 
tion of  his  time  in  school.  To  understand  the 
influences  which  are  operating  upon  his  devel- 
oping mind  and  character  we  must  take  a  view 
that  is  much  wider  than  that  afforded  by  the 
school.  The  child's  home,  his  companions 
when  out  of  school,  his  vacations,  and  the  in- 
fluences exerted  upon  him  by  his  occupations, 
must  all  be  taken  into  account  by  those  who 
would  understand  and  intelligently  guide  the 
processes  of  his  unfolding  life. 

The  profound  social  and  economic  changes 
of  the  past  few  decades  have  completely  trans- 
formed the  environment  of  our  children.  The 


Introduction.  17 

•old  educative  forces,  developed  through  count- 
less generations,  have  been  destroyed  and  noth- 
ing equivalent  has  been  found  to  replace  them. 
The  school  must  take  over  this  new  burden 
and  this  new  responsibility.  It  must  do  for 
the  children  of  this  generation  what  the  indus- 
trial home  of  the  past  did  for  the  children  of 
former  generations.  The  parent  and  the  teach- 
er, in  too  many  cases  the  product  of  the  older 
home  conditions,  have  no  key  to  the  child's 
mind  and  heart  and.  as  a  consequence,  are  un- 
able to  maintain  their  supremacy  and  to  guide 
him  prudently  in  the  situations  which  confront 
him.  Their  own  education  was  rooted  in  mus- 
cle and  sense  training,  in  industrial  processes 
and  in  real  duties,  but  these  things  were  not 
considered  by  them  in  the  light  of  educational 
forces.  The  supplementary  school  drills  in  the 
three  R's  stand  out  in  their  consciousness  as 
the  sum  total  of  their  education  and  they  are 
ama/ed  today  at  the  fact  that  children  who  re- 
ceive far  superior  drills  in  these  subjects  re- 
main lamentably  deficient  in  intellectual  power. 
Thev  do  not  realize  that  the  children  of  todav 


i8  Introduction 

are  wholly  deprived  of  the  best  educative  in- 
fluences that  were  operative  in  their  own  child- 
hood. 

Recent  social  changes  are  not  less  pro- 
nounced than  industrial  changes  or  less  far- 
reaching  in  their  effects  upon  our  children. 
The  father  and  the  older  members  of  the  fam- 
ily are  compelled  to  seek  employment  outside 
the  home,  and  the  children  are  thus  deprived 
of  their  companionship  and  protection.  The 
child  begins  his  individual  life  in  almost  total 
dependence  upon  his  parents,  and  during  the 
period  of  his  development  he  leans  upon  au- 
thority in  every  phase  of  his  intellectual  and 
moral  life.  During  adolescence  his  mind 
comes  under  the  dominion  of  intrinsic  evi- 
dence and  he  gradually  learns  to  shape  his  con- 
duct freely  in  the  light  of  the  truth  which  he 
assimilates,  but  even  in  the  highest  reaches  of 
mature  development  such  self-determination 
affects  only  a  small  part  of  life. 

The  teaching  of  positive  religion,  national 
customs,  and  family  traditions  in  the  past  de- 
termined the  conduct  of  the  child  and  of  the 


Introduction  19 

man.  Today,  the  environment  of  the  child, 
particularly  of  the  child  brought  up  in  our 
cities,  is  such  as  to  destroy  all  reverence  for 
authority  and  to  break  the  force  of  creeds,  na- 
tional customs  and  family  traditions  that  have 
played  so  large  a  part  in  bringing  to  balanced 
maturity  the  minds  and  characters  of  our  fore- 
fathers. The  conflict  of  various  national  cus- 
toms tends  to  make  all  such  customs  absurd 
to  the  child.  "Frenchy,"  "Dutchy,"  "Paddy," 
"Dago,"  "Polock,"  etc.,  are  terms  which  soon 
make  the  sensitive  child  seek  to  escape  from 
the  thraldom  of  national  customs  and  to  avoid 
all  those  practices  which  would  differentiate 
him  from  his  fellow  pupils.  These  children 
soon  cease  to  look  upon  their  parents  and  their 
own  people  with  reverence  or  to  treat  with  re- 
spect the  opinions  and  the  practices  of  their 
forefathers.  Similarly,  the  conflict  of  creeds, 
inevitable  where  the  children  of  many  religious 
denominations  mingle  freely,  results  in  robbing 
these  poor  disinherited  children  of  the  support 
which  their  fathers  found  in  the  teachings  and 
in  the  practice  of  their  religion. 


2O  Introduction 

These  evils,   instead  of   being-  alleviated   in 
every  possible  way  by  the  school  authorities, 
are  usually  aggravated  by  unwise  and  short- 
sighted zealots  who.  in  order  to  produce  good 
citizens,    would   gladly   destroy   national     cus- 
toms,   and   who,    in   order   to   produce   broad- 
minded  men,  would  remove  the  authority  and 
the  positive  teaching  of  religion.     Under  these 
conditions   the   immature   mind   and   character 
of  the  child  is  suddenly  deprived  of  all  those 
helps   that   nature   intended   should   be  present 
to   support   and  sustain   him    until    his    mind 
reaches  maturity.      From  the    day    he    enters 
school  he  must  be  able  to  rely  upon  his  own 
intelligence   for  guidance   in  all   those  matters 
that  have  been  the  chief  concern  of  the  noblest 
and   wisest  among  the  children  of  men   since 
the   dawn   of   human   history.      These   zealous 
levelers  of  national  customs  and  religious    be- 
lief.-- seem  to  forget  that  the  adult  may  draw 
upon  the  experience  of  the  race,  while  the  child 
has  only  his  own  inexperience  to  look  to  for 
guidance.     And  just  when  all  this  burden  of 
determining  lines  of  conduct  and  of  building 


Introduction  21 

character  is  placed  upon  the  child's  budding  in- 
telligence the  old  and  tried  educative  forces 
of  the  industrial  home  are  swept  away  by  mod- 
ern economic  conditions. 

Sense  training,  participation  in  complete  in- 
dustrial processes  and  the  steadying  influence 
of   real    duties  have  dropped   away   from  our 
children  and  to  supply  their  place  the  schools 
offer  a  more  elaborate  program  of  the  three 
Iv's  and  a  strictly  formal  academic  discipline. 
This   aspect   of  the  school   situation   was  well 
summed   up   in   an   address   delivered   recently 
before  the  Century  Club  of  Detroit  by  a  pub- 
lic   school    man    of    wide    experience   who    la- 
bored for  many  years  with  marked  success  in 
the  public  schools  of  Chicago  and  who  is  now 
principal  of  a  high  school  in  Xew  York  City. 
''Every    loss    sustained    by    the    home    was 
claimed  by  the  school,  but  instead  of  supply- 
ing   that    diversity    of    industrial    experience 
which  the  young  folks  were  losing,  the  school 
continued    to    develop    upon    its    bookish    side 
until   it  almost  completely  separated  the  chil- 
dren from  the  original  instinctive  interests  of 


22  Introduction 

life.  In  place  of  supplementing'  and  varying 
the  child's  existence,  the  school,  by  enlarging 
a  supplementary  service  into  a  principal  con- 
sideration, has  brought  us  to  the  spectacle  of 
systematic  education  ignoring  the  instincts, 
tastes,  and  desires  of  its  material,  judging  of 
its  needs  by  its  o\vn  historically  narrow  stand- 
ards, possessed  of  great  influence  by  the  per- 
sistence of  a  tradition  once  adequate,  endowed 
with  tremendous  strength  by  the  perfection 
of  a  legalized  system,  but  developing  the  race 
on  a  plan  appalingly  warped  and  one-sicled. 
The  public  school  is  demanding  more  and 
more  of  the  children's  time  for  its,  as  yet.  un- 
justified purposes;  little  children  are  loaded 
with  books  beyond  not  only  their  mental  but 
their  physical  strength.  The  parent  who 
wiuld  plav  with  his  children  must  yield  to  the 
inexorable  demands  of  school  work  at  home. 
The  schoolmaster  growls  at  music  lessons, 
whines  at  dancing  school,  bemoans  the  chil- 
dren's party,  and  claims  the  whole  child,  for 
what?1 — for  the  tilings  that  my  frank  up-the- 
starc  friend  says  arc  the  only  things  our  public 


Introduction  23 

schools  sincerely  care  for :  reading,  writing, 
ciphering,  a  few  facts  of  geography,  history 
and  science,  that  is  all.  Personally,  I  had  very 
much  rather  not  have  my  own  children  de- 
velop into  the  type  proposed  by  the  school- 
master. I  have  the  feeling  that  in  the  chil- 
dren themselves  are  suggestions  more  worth 
following  than  the  artificial,  one-sided,  and 
isolated  bookish  ideas  that  educational  systems 
have  set  at  the  center  of  their  plan.  In  this, 
if  I  read  the  papers  correctly,  I  am  not  unique. 
The  prevailing  note  of  comment  on  public  edu- 
cation is  that  it  has  not  made  good." 

This  summing  up  of  the  situation  is  typical 
of  much  that  is  being  thought  and  said  on  the 
subject  at  present.  The  schools  have  failed  to 
adjust  themselves  to  the  new  conditions  of 
the  child.  They  have  failed  to  reach  his  vital 
interests,  and  hence  an  army  of  truant  officers 
is  required  to  compel  attendance.  The  Massa- 
chusetts Commission  says.  "There  is  a  vague 
feeling  of  dissatisfaction  with  the  results  of 
the  existing  public  school  system.  The  schools 
are  too  exclusive! v  bookish  in  their  spirit. 


24  Introduction 

scope,  and  methods.''  Children  under  sixteen 
are  not  usually  employed  in  the  factories  of 
Massachusetts,  the  law  does  not  compel  chil- 
dren over  fourteen  years  of  age  to  attend 
school,  and  Dr.  Kingsbury  has  shown  that 
25.000  children,  between  the  ages  of  fourteen 
and  sixteen,  in  the  State  of  Massachusetts 
alone,  are  out  of  school  and  idle  for  the  most 
part.  The  schools  do  not  attract  our  chil- 
dren. The  attendance  laws  are  requiring  more 
and  more  executive  agents  and  are  costing 
more  and  more  money  to  enforce.  \Ye  are 
compelling  multitudes  of  our  children  to  take 
what  neither  they  nor  their  parents  want.  If 
the  education  given  in  our  schools  reached  the 
lives  of  our  children  and  lifted  up  the  children 
and  their  parents  as  it  should,  we  would  have 
a  different  story  to  tell. 

In  this  book  an  attempt  is  made  to  shcnv 
some  of  the  things  that  render  school  life 
odious  to  the  children,  some  of  those  things 
that  make  truants  and  dullards  out  of  the  best 
of  children.  Minds  with  the  greatest  strength 
at  maturity  often  develop  slowly  in  early  child- 


Introduction  25 

hood,  and  these  have  frequently  been  humili- 
ated and  discouraged  by  the  ignorant  teacher 
who  mistakes  their  condition    for    congenital 
idiocy,  native  perversity,  or  unredeemable  lazi- 
ness.    Again,  smell  and  taste,  touch  and  mus- 
cle sense,  lie  deep  in  the  nervous  system  and 
are  the  earliest  to  develop.     They  lend  strength 
and     vigor     to    the    mental    content    derived 
through  the  eye  and  the  ear.     And  our  schools, 
ignoring  this,  too  frequently  appeal  to  the  eye 
and  ear  alone  at  a  time  when  the  brain  is  not 
ready  for  development  in  these  directions,  with 
the  result  that  children,  with  all  the  fair  prom- 
ise of  future  greatness,  are  rejected  and  brand- 
ed as  dull  and  backward,  to  be  driven  from 
the  school   in  discouragement  and  revolt  and 
to  add  to  the  vicious  element  of  society  lives 
that    if    properly    directed    would    be    found 
among  its  greatest  benefactors. 

Finally,  an  attempt  is  made  to  show  the  re- 
lationship that  exists  between  industrial  pro- 
cesses and  home  duties  on  the  one  hand  and 
the  development  of  the  child's  mind  and  char- 
acter on  the  other.  It  is  not  expected,  of 


26  Introduction 

course,  that  other  children  will  go  through  ex- 
periences similar  to  those  that  befell  the  oma- 
dhaun,  nevertheless,  in  the  story  of  his  return 
to  normal  conditions,  there  may  readily  be 
traced  the  power  of  sensory  and  muscular 
training  to  awaken  and  strengthen  purely  in- 
tellectual processes.  The  whole  story  is  full 
of  suggestiveness  for  those  who  are  respon- 
sible for  the  work  of  our  schools  and  who  are 
endeavoring  to  secure  a  proper  adjustment  be- 
tween our  educational  systems  and  the  new 
environmental  conditions  in  which  our  chil- 
dren live. 


CHAPTER  I 
Sludcvan's  Omadhaun 

<(Dr.  Studevan's  lecture  at  our  last  meeting," 
said  Mr.  O'Brien,  "brought  to  a  graceful  con- 
clusion our  desultory  discussions  on  Co-edu- 
cation and  the  Higher  Education  of  Women ; 
it  gave  us  a  pleasant  evening  and  an  oppor- 
tunity to  meet  a  number  of  delightful  people. 
But  we  have  with  us  this  evening  in  the  two 
new  members  who  have  joined  our  little  circle 
the  best  fruit  of  the  Doctor's  effort.  Miss  Rus- 
sell's presence  will  add  a  new  charm  to  our 
meetings,  while  her  training  and  her  position 
as  model  teacher  in  the  Lee  School  render  her 
eminently  qualified  to  enlighten  us  on  the 
characteristic  features  of  the  modern  school- 
room: and  Judge  Russell's  long  experience  at 
the  bar  and  on  the  bench  makes  him  just  the 
man  to  keep  the  peace  between  Dr.  Studevan 
and  Professor  Shannon." 

"1   object  to  that  role."  said  the  Judge.   "I 


28       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

have  quite  enough  of  that  all  day.  I  came 
here  to  learn  something  about  modern  educa- 
tion and  its  methods,  which  Alice  informs  me 
have  undergone  many  radical  changes  since 
my  school  days.  I  have  an  ancient  grudge 
against  the  schoolmaster  for  cruel  treatment 
that  has  kept  me  from  following  the  develop- 
ments in  education." 

"If  you  were  attending  the  schools  of  to- 
day," said  Professor  Shannon,  "you  might 
have  a  grudge  of  quite  another  kind.  Judg- 
ing from  G.  Stanley  Hall's  article  in  the  Feb- 
ruary number  of  Munsey's  the  boys  are  at  pres- 
ent suffering  from  too  much  gentleness.  Let 
me  read  you  a  few  lines  from  this  interesting 
article : 

"  'Many  of  the  boys,  especially  in  the  upper 
classes  of  the  high  schools,  are  so  out-num- 
bered that  they  are  practically  in  a  girls'  school, 
taught  by  women  at  just  that  age  when  vigor- 
ous male  control  and  example  arc  more  needed 
than  at  any  other  time  of  life.  The  natural 
exuberance  of  the  boy  is  often  toned  down,  but 
if  he  is  to  be  well  virified  later,  ought  he  not  in 


Studevan's  Omadhaun  29 

the  middle  teens,  and  later,  to  be  so  boisterous 
at  times  as  to  be  rather  unfit  for  constant  com- 
panionship with  girls?  Is  there  not  something 
wrong  with  the  high  school  boy  who  can  truly 
b'e  called  a  perfect  gentleman,  or  whose  conduct 
and  character  conform  to  the  ideals  of  the  av- 
erage unmarried  female  teacher?  Boys  need 
a  different  discipline,  moral  regimen,  atmos- 
phere, and  method  of  work  *  *  *  Under 
female  influence  certainly — as,  alas,  too  often 
under  that  of  the  male  teacher — form  now  al- 
ways tends  to  take  precedence  over  content. 
The  boy  revolts  at  much  method  with  meager 
matter,  craves  utility  and  application.  Too  of- 
ten, when  the  very  germs  of  his  manhood  are 
burgeoning,  all  these  instincts  are  denied,  and 
he  is  compelled  to  learn  the  stated  lessons  which 
every  one  else  in  the  country  is  learning  at  his 
age,  to  work  all  day  with  girls.  As  a  result, 
without  knowing  what  is  the  matter,  his  inter- 
est gradually  declines,  and  he  drops  out  of 
school,  when,  with  a  robust  tone  or  opportunity 
to  vent  his  boy  nature,  such  as  prevailed  at  Har- 
row, Eton,  or  Rugby,  he  would  have  fought  it 


30       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

through  and  done  well.  The  feminization  of 
the  school  spirit,  discipline  and  personnel  is  bad 
for  the  boy.  His  manners  are  improved,  and 
in  this  the  woman  teacher  sees  a  great  excel- 
lence; but  this  is  the  age  when  some  brutish 
elements  in  his  nature  should  have  had  an  op- 
portunity to  vent  and  work  themselves  off  in  a 
wholesome  way.  If  he  stays  in  school,  he  may 
tend  to  grow  content  with  mechanical  and 
memoriter  work  and  to  excel  on  lines  of  girls' 
qualities,  while  failing  to  develop  the  best  traits 
of  his  own  sex.'  ' 

"There  was  no  danger  of  feminization  in  my 
school  days."  said  the  Judge.  "The  school- 
master used  a  vigorous  masculine  control  which 
he  exercised  with  his  cat-o-nine-tails.  When 
a  boy  didn't  know  his  lesson  he  was  mounted 
on  the  back  of  a  larger  boy,  while  a  third 
applied  the  cat-o-nine-tails  vigorously  to  the 
least  intelligent  part  of  him.  In  fact,  the  school- 
master didn't  seem  to  think  that  he  had  done 
his  full  duty  by  a  boy  unless  he  had  flogged 
him  two  or  three  times  a  week." 

"The  schoolmaster  of  those  davs,"  said  Mr. 


Studevan's  Omadhaun  31 

O'Brien,  "evidently  believed  in  the  proverb', 
'Spare  the  rod  and  spoil  the  child,'  but  you 
must  have  a  very  unforgiving  disposition, 
Judge,  if  you  have  harbored  this  against  him 
all  these  years." 

"My  grievance  is  deeper  than  that,"  replied 
the  Judge,  "although  I  have  never  forgiven  the 
teacher  for  flogging  the  boys;  it  was  a  cow- 
ardly advantage  that  he  took  because  of  his 
position  and  superior  strength.  But  I  suffered 
in  a  way  that  none  of  the  other  boys  did.  The 
teacher  scared  me  one  day  into  speechlessness, 
which  injured  my  vocal  organs  so  that  I  was 
unable  to  speak  for  sixteen  years,  and  I  have 
stuttered  all  my  life  as  a  consequence  of  that 
teacher's  blundering." 

"The  schools  have  changed  much  since  the 
forties,"  said  Dr.  Studevan :  "and,  though  I  do 
not  doubt  that  this  change  is  due.  in  large 
measure,  to  the  constantly  increasing  number 
of  women  teachers,  still,  there  are  at  work 
oilier  causes  n<>  loss  potent. 

"In  my  early  days  1  had  a  woman  teacher 
who  knew  how  to  handle  the  birch  quite  as  well 


32       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

as  any  man.  She  sent  me  home  from  school  as 
an  'omadhaun'  at  the  age  of  nine  and  advised 
my  parents  to  put  me  to  work  on  the  farm 
since,  in  her  opinion,  there  was  no  hope  that 
I  would  ever  learn  anything. 

"At  the  age  of  thirteen  I  fell  from  a  load  of 
hay  and  broke  my  arm.  While  it  was  mending 
I  was  sent  back  to  school,  but  after  two  months' 
trial  and  a  good  thrashing  I  was  again  returned 
to  my  parents  with  the  same  verdict.  However, 
I  hold  no  grudge  against  my  teachers.  They 
acted  up  to  the  best  lights  of  their  time  and,  as 
it  happens,  it  was  a  fortunate  thing  for  me  that 
I  was  taken  out  of  school  and  put  to  work  on 
the  farm  during  those  years." 

"Aren't  you  drawing  on  your  imagination 
just  a  little?"  asked  Miss  Ruth. 

"Xo,  it's  all  the  solemn,  sober  truth.  I  was 
known  in  all  the  countryside  for  eight  years 
as  'Studevan's  omadhaun.'  Of  course  I  need 
not  add  that  my  teachers  and  parents  and  neigh- 
bors generally,  were  mistaken.  When  I  came  up 
on',  of  the  darkness  and  discovered  that  I  \vas 
not  different  from  other  men  I  became  very 


Studevan's  Omadhaun  33 

much  interested  in  my  own  case.  It  was  this, 
in  fact,  that  gave  me  my  first  and  my  abiding 
interest  in  physiological  psychology.  I  could 
not  bring  myself  to  believe  that  God  had  given 
me  a  soul  different  from  the  souls  of  other  boys. 
I  felt  that  the  cause  of  my  condition  must  be 
found  on  the  physical  side.  I  have  since  come 
to  understand  that  not  only  was  this  true,  but 
that  my  case  was  simply  an  exaggerated  form 
of  what  is  to  be  found  in  every  school  in  the 
country." 

"Please  tell  us  how  you  got  out  of  that  con- 
dition/' said  Miss  Russell.  "I  have  a  large 
over-grown  girl  in  my  room.  I  can't  teach 
her  anything  and  yet  she  seems  to  be  a  good 
girl  and  I  don't  believe  she  is  an  idiot." 

"Have  you  been  able  to  clear  up  your  diffi- 
culty, Doctor?''  asked  Miss  Ruth.  "When  did 
your  real  mental  development  begin  ?  Did  some 
teacher  who  understood  your  case  give  you  just 
the  kind  of  help  you  needed?" 

"Xo;  teachers  had  nothing  to  do  with  it.  I 
don't  object  in  the  least  to  telling  you  all  about 
it;  but  it  is  a  long  story  and  one  that  I  fear 


34       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

has  more  interest  for  me  than  it  can  possibly 
have  for  any  one  else." 

"I  don't  see  how  you  make  that  out,"  re- 
plied Miss  Russell.  "The  dullard  is  the  trial  of 
every  teacher's  life.  And,  since  you  have 
passed  through  that  phase  of  existence  your- 
self, you  should  be  able  to  help  the  rest  of  us 
solve  the  problem.  But,  of  course,  I  don't  wish 
to  pry  into  your  personal  affairs,  though  I  con- 
fess I'm  dying  of  curiosity  to  know  all  about 
it." 

"As  to  that,"  replied  the  Doctor,  "you  need 
have  no  fear.  I  am  not  the  least  bit  sensitive 
on  the  subject.  My  own  case  has  caused  me 
to  understand  a  great  many  things  that  would 
otherwise  have  remained  a  sealed  book  to  me. 
I  have  often  told  the  story  from  the  lecture  plat- 
form. As  you  may  realize,  I  have  a  deep  sym- 
pathy for  the  over-grown,  dull  boy  who  is  mis- 
understood by  everybody;  and  if  this  chapter 
in  my  own  life  will  serve  in  any  way  to  bring 
help  to  him,  I  am  quite  willing  that  it  should 
be  used  for  that  purpose. 

"I  will  tell  you  as  much  about  my  case  as 


Studevan's  Omadhaun  35 

you  care  to  listen  to  at  another  time,  but  to- 
night I  want  to  hear  your  father's  story.  I 
have  known  the  Judge  for  many  years  without 
having  suspected  that  there  was  such  a  tragedy 
in  his  life." 


CHAPTER  II 

A  Diagnosis 

"Judge,"  said  the  Doctor,  "won't  you  please 
please  tell  us  what  caused  you  to  remain  dumb 
during  a  period  so  far  exceeding  that  of  the 
speechlessness  of  Zachary?" 

"I  would  much  rather  hear  an  account  of 
your  case,  Doctor,  all  that  I  know  of  my  dumb- 
ness is  soon  told. 

"I  was  born  in  1840.  and  I  must  have  been 
a  precocious  child  for  I  went  on  the  stump  for 
President  Polk  in  1844.  while  still  in  curls  and 
pinafores.  I  was  out  on  the  front  of  the  stage 
one  night,  reciting  a  little  speech  for  Polk,  when 
some  of  the  scenery  behind  me  fell  and  caught 
fire,  and  the  stage  manager  swore  like  the  son 
of  a  sea  cook.  I  was  frightened  to  death." 

"Was  it  the  stage  manager's  tall  talk  that 
struck  you  dumb?"  asked  Mr.  O'Brien. 

"Xo,  that  calamity  befell  me  on  my  first  day 
in  school  three  years  later.  We  lived  in  a  lit- 


A  Diagnosis  37 

tie  village  and  the  teacher  boarded  at  our 
house.  I  could  read  quite  well  before  I  went 
to  school,  but  the  strange  surroundings  made 
me  bashful  and  when  the  reading  class  was 
called.  I  remained  in  my  seat.  The  teacher 
ordered  me  to  join  the  class,  b'ut  I  only  sucked 
my  thumb.  At  last  he  came  down  to  my  bench. 
I  wanted  to  read  to  him  alone  but  he  wouldn't 
listen  to  me.  I  think  he  wanted  to  show  the 
rest  of  the  class  how  well  I  could  read  and  my 
conduct  irritated  him.  He  grabbed  me  by  the 
collar  and  yanked  me  out  of  my  seat  and 
shoved  me  into  the  fourth  or  fifth  place  from 
the  head  of  the  class.  I  was  scared  stiff  and 
when  it  came  my  turn  to  read  I  couldn't  utter 
a  word.  This  frightened  me  still  more.  I  felt 
that  there  was  something  wrong  inside  of  me 
and  I  began  to  bellow.  After  the  other  chil- 
dren were  dismissed  that  evening  the  teacher 
and  my  brothers  and  sisters  scolded  me  for 
having  disgraced  them  and  ridiculed  me  for 
having  made  such  a  fool  of  myself.  I  tried  to 
answer  them  but  I  could  not,  and  as  soon  as  I 
<rot  outside  I  ran  as  hard  as  I  could  to  mv 


38       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

father's  office.  Daddy  and  I  were  always 
chums  and  I  felt  that  I  could  tell  him  every- 
thing, but  when  I  got  there  I  couldn't  get  a 
word  out.  This  scared  me  so  that  I  fell  on  the 
floor  in  a  faint,  and  I  have  no  recollection  of 
what  happened  for  some  days  afterward." 

"Wasn't  a  doctor  called  in  to  attend  you?" 
asked  Dr.  Studevan. 

"Xo,"  replied  the  Judge.  "I  was  up  and 
around  shortly.  There  was  a  sort  of  fatalism 
about  my  people;  the  fact  that  I  was  unable 
to  speak  convinced  them  that  I  was  an  idiot. 
They  were  sorry  for  me  and  hopeless  about 
it;  that  was  all.  I  think  my  father  was  the 
only  one  who  declined  to  accept  that  as  a  so- 
lution of  my  case. 

"I  went  back  to  school  after  a  while  and 
listened  to  what  the  others  were  saying.  In 
fact  I  got  along  in  the  ordinary  subjects  about 
as  well  as  the  other  children. 

"There  was  nothing  wrong  with  mv  under- 

O  "         O  * 

standing,  nevertheless,  for  a  long  time  I  made 
no  effort  to  talk.  After  I  had  learned  to  write 
I  used  to  hang  a  slate  around  my  neck  and 


A  Diagnosis  39 

write  my  answers  whenever  it  was  absolutely 
necessary  to  reply.  When  I  was  nineteen  I 
undertook  to  edit  a  country  newspaper  at  which 
I  worked  four  years.  I  used  to  lock  myself  in 
a  back  room  and  it  would  have  been  easier  for 
any  one  to  get  at  the  Czar  of  Russia  than  to 
get  at  me.  The  paper  was  good  enough  of  its 
kind  for  that  day,  but  of  course  it  wouldn't 
look  like  much  now." 

"How  did  you  overcome  your  stammering 
and  learn  to  talk?"  asked  Miss  Ruth. 

"As  you  see,  I  never  did  get  over  it;  I  have 
stuttered  all  my  life.  \Yhen  I  was  twenty- 
three  years  old  I  moved  into  the  city  and  se- 
cured a  position  on  a  large  daily,  where  I  soon 
found  that  I  could  not  get  along  without  talk- 
ing. I  realized  that  I  would  have  to  learn  to 
talk  or  remain  a  hewer  of  wood  and  a  drawer 
of  water  all  my  life,  so  I  determined  to  talk. 
My  first  attempts  were  very  painful ;  I  often  fell 
on  the  floor  from  sheer  exhaustion  in  my  ef- 
forts to  get  out  a  word." 

"Didn't  you  try  putting  a  pebble  under  your 
toneue?"  asked  Professor  Shannon. 


4O       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

"Oh,  yes,  for  some  years  I  was  a  perambu- 
lating stone  quarry ;  but  I  want  to  say  right 
here  that  old  Demosthenes  didn't  know  what  he 
was  talking  about.  He  went  down  to  the  sea 
and  shouted  so  as  to  make  himself  heard  above 
the  roar  of  the  waves ;  it  was  this  that  helped 
him.  I  could  always  sing ;  and  after  I  had 
made  my  first  efforts  to  talk  I  found  that  when 
I  got  out  in  the  woods  I  could  recite  poetry, 
that  is,  if  you  call  the  Lady  of  the  Lake  poetry. 
Marmion  and  Douglas  was  my  favorite  piece. 
For  a  while  I  found  it  very  difficult  to  get 
started,  but  once  I  got  out  the  first  few  words, 
the  swing  and  rhythm  of  it  carried  me  along. 
T  indulged  in  this  exercise  very  frequently  and 
found  that  it  helped  me  more  than  anything 
else.  That's  all  I  know  about  my  case,  except 
that  I've  no  Adam's  Apple  and  it  seems  to  me 
that  there  is  something  wrong  with  my  vocal 
cords." 

"Xo,"  said  Dr.  Studevan.  "from  what  you 
tell  me,  I  judge  that  the  trouble  was  purely 
cerebral." 


A  Diagnosis  41 

"Well,  just  feel  of  my  throat,  Doctor;  it  is 
not  like  other  men's  throats." 

"Why,  yes,  Judge,  I  find  that  your  throat  is 
all  right.  Here  is  the  Adam's  Apple.  It  is  lo- 
cated just  a  little  higher  than  usual  and  it  is 
covered  by  this  fat  on  your  neck.  Your  voice 
is  strong  and  resonant  and  the  fact  that  you 
could  sing  during  your  period  of  dumbness  is 
evidence  enough  that  your  vocal  organs  were 
intact.  Did  you  ever  use  tobacco,  Judge?" 

"Yes,  I  attempted  to  chew  once,  but  I  swal- 
lowed the  whole  thing  and  in  a  fe\v  minutes 
I  was  trying  to  pull  the  tacks  out  of  my  shoes; 
but  I  have  always  smoked ;  in  fact,  between 
the  ages  of  sixteen  and  twenty-three  I  was  a 
heavy  smoker.  But  after  I  began  to  talk  I 
found  that  one  cigar  increased  my  difficulty  in 
speaking  fully  fifty  per  cent,  and  that  two 
cigars  smoked  in  succession  rendered  it  almost 
impossible  for  me  to  talk  for  several  hours,  and 
I  felt  the  effects  for  many  days." 

"ITow  about  drink  ?" 

''That  had  just  the  opposite  effect;  I  have  al- 
ways taken  a  glass  of  whiskey  on  occasion  and 


42       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

I  have  found  that  it  rather  helped  me  than 
otherwise." 

"All  this  confirms  my  diagnosis.  The  trou- 
ble was  certainly  cerebral." 

"Doctor,  my  brain  was  all  right,"  insisted  the 
Judge,  "I  could  understand  things  as  well  as 
anybody  else.  It  was  only  the  machinery  of 
expression  that  was  out  of  order." 

"I  grant  that,  but  it  was  the  cerebral  part  of 
the  machinery  and  not  the  peripheral  organs." 

"Howr  do  you  explain  the  case?"  asked  Miss 
Ruth. 

"That  is  a  long  story  and  it  is  very  difficult 
to  strip  it  of  technicalities.  Moreover,  any  de- 
tailed explanation  involves  matters  that  are 
more  or  less  speculative.  The  complex  muscu- 
lature of  speech  in  all  right-handed  persons  is 
under  the  control  of  a  group  of  nerve  cells  in 
the  third  left  frontal  convolution  of  the  brain. 
These  cells  in  turn  are  governed  by  cells  in 
the  temporal  lobe,  which  underlie  all  our  con- 
sciousness of  sound,  or  by  cells  in  the  back  of 
the  brain  that  underlie  our  consciousness  of 
vision. 


A  Diagnosis  43 

"\Yhen  we  read,  the  visual  image  of  the  word 
rests  on  a  set  of  nerve  currents  in  the  occipital 
lobe  in  the  back  of  the  brain.  These  currents 
flow  out  along  definite  nerve  paths  to  the 
speech-center  and  there  discharge  the  appropri- 
ate nerve  cells.  When  we  are  speaking  from 
the  memory  of  the  sounds  of  words,  it  is  the 
cells  in  the  temporal  lobe  that  control  the  speech 
center. 

"The  little  boy,  I  take  it,  was  of  a  highly 
nervous  type.  His  nervousness  was  probably 
accentuated  by  the  accident  on  the  stage,  and 
when  the  teacher  dealt  with  him  so  roughly, 
the  nerve  tension  rose  above  the  normal  limit, 
and  overflowed  the  normal  channels,  so  that 
the  currents  failed  to  reach  the  speech-center  in 
the  proper  co-ordinatio'i  to  govern  the  vocal 
organs. 

"The  high  emotional  state  induced  by  the 
novelty  of  his  surroundings  on  his  first  day  in 
school  probably  added  to  the  difficulty;  but  all 
this  would  likely  have  passed  off  without  doing 
much  permanent  harm  were  it  not  for  the  fright 
that  resulted  from  his  futile  attempts  to  talk. 


44       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

He  had  no  understanding  of  what  was  the 
matter  with  him  and,  on  being  suddenly  struck 
dumb,  fear  took  possession  of  his  little  soul. 
This  fear  was  further  increased  by  his  subse- 
quent futile  attempts  to  explain  the  matter  to 
his  brothers  and  sisters  and  to  his  father,  and, 
coupled  with  his  failures,  it  \vas  burned  into  his 
brain  by  nerve  currents  of  extremely  high  ten- 
sion. The  result  of  all  this  was  a  permanent 
brain  impression  that  continued  to  exert  an 
inhibitory  influence  on  all  his  subsequent  at- 
tempts to  speak." 


CHAPTER  III 

The  Mental  Record 

"There  is  some  direct  relation  between  the 
emotional  tension  and  the  pennamency  of  the 
mental  record,"  said  the  Doctor.  "Our  earliest 
remembered  impressions  are  usually  the  result 
of  some  exceptionally  high  emotional  state, 
such  as  the  Judge's  clearly  defined  picture  of 
the  happenings  on  the  stage  that  night  when 
he  was  scarcely  four  years  old. 

"What  is  the  first  thing  you  remember,  Miss 
Ruth?" 

"My  earliest  impression,1'  replied  Miss  Ruth, 
"was  of  the  first  and  only  spanking  I  ever  got. 
My  mother  went  down  town  one  day  and  be- 
fore going"  she  cautioned  me  not  to  leave  the 
house  under  any  circumstances  until  she  should 
return.  Xo\v.  I  had  a  Tom  Sawyer  sweet- 
heart living  next  door  who  came  for  me  shortly 
after  mother  left,  and  he  insisted  that  I  should 


46       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

go  with  him  to  his  attic  to  see  a  wonderful 
old  clock  that  he  had  unearthed.  I  thought  I 
would  be  back  before  my  mother  got  home,  but 
missed  my  calculations  and  mother  gave  me  a 
good  spanking  for  my  disobedience. 

"I  was  filled  with  anger,  but  my  predominant 
feeling  was  one  of  disgust.  I  was  ashamed  of 
my  mother  and  was  quite  overcome  by  the 
thought  that  she  should  treat  her  little  girl  in 
that  way.  It  took  me  a  long  time  to  get  back 
my  respect  for  her.  She  must  have  seen  that 
the  effect  of  the  whipping  was  bad,  for  she 
never  repeated  the  experiment.  I  was  not  quite 
three  years  old,  but  I  remember  all  the  details 
of  those  few  hours  as  vividly  as  if  it  were  but 
yesterday.  I  have  no  recollection  of  anything 
else  that  occurred  for  nearly  a  year  afterwards." 

"How  careful  parents  should  be  of  the  im- 
pressions made  on  children  in  their  emotional 
moments,"  said  Mrs.  O'Brien,  "if  the  record 
becomes  so  permanent." 

"Teachers,  even  more  than  parents,  should 
bear  that  truth  in  mind,"  said  Miss  Ruth, 
"since  its  obverse  shows  how  little  value  is  to  be 


The  Mental  Record  47 

attached  to  the  cold,  routine  teaching  of  chil- 
dren." 

"You  are  quite  right,"  said  the  Doctor,  "it  is 
true  at  all  times  in  life,  but  particulalry  in  child- 
hood, that  all  permanent  impressions  are  made 
in  a  large  solvent  of  feeling." 

"That  provides  a  good  justification  for  cor- 
poral punishment,"  said  the  Professor.  "Asso- 
ciate disagreeable  impressions  with  a  large 
solvent  of  feeling  generated  by  the  birch  and 
attach  these  to  wrong  conduct  and  you  cure  the 
child's  budding  tendency  to  crime." 

"Recent  vital  statistics,"  said  the  Judge, 
"show  that  there  has  been  a  very  marked  in- 
crease in  juvenile  crime  in  recent  years  since 
corporal  punishment  went  out  of  fashion  in 
our  schools,  but  I  never  thought  of  connecting 
the  two  things. 

"Do  you  really  think.  Doctor,  that  it  would 
be  well  to  return  to  corporal  punishment?" 

"Xo.  I  am  a  very  decided  opponent  of  cor- 
poral punishment,  nor  can  I  believe  that  the 
Professor  is  so  benighted  as  to  advocate  a  re- 
turn to  the  birch.  The  whole  spirit  of  the 
Christian  religion  is  away  from  the  govern- 


48       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

ment  of  conduct  through  inhibitions.  It  is  no 
longer  'Thou  shalt  not/  but  'Thou  shalt.' 

"Civilization  is  one  long  record  of  the  failure 
of  punishments  as  deterrents  of  crime.  In  the 
ancient  days  every  time  a  traitor  was  drawn 
and  quartered  and  his  head  placed  on  the  city 
gate,  treason  multiplied  within  the  walls.  Ex- 
perience has  proved  that  public  executions  are 
demoralizing  and,  in  the  interests  of  morality, 
they  are  suppressed  in  most  states.  It  is 
worthy  of  notice,  too,  that  the  few  states  of  the 
union  in  which  capital  punishment  no  longer 
exists  have  a  lower  percentage  of  murders  than 
any  of  the  states  that  inflict  capital  punishment 
for  this  crime. 

"But  to  return  to  the  home  and  the  school- 
room. "We  should  make  use  of  the  emotional 
states  of  children  to  build  up  in  their  lives  last- 
ing impressions  of  noble  conduct,  right  living, 
and  high  ideals.  Childhood,  at  least,  should 
be  saved  from  contact  with  wickedness  and 
from  the  necessity  of  inhibitory  impressions." 

"Doctor,  is  stammering  usually  caused  by 
some  occurrence  similar  to  that  in  my  father's 
case?"  asked  Miss  Russell. 


The  Mental  Record  49 

"Yes.  in  ;i  measure,  I  take  your  father's  case 
to  be  typical.  It  is  somewhat  extreme,  of 
course.  The  circumstances  vary,  and  the  de- 
grees of  injury  vary,  but  the  underlying-  causes 
are,  for  the  most  part,  much  the  same.  It  is 
fear  that  he  is  going'  to  stammer  that  makes  the 
stammerer  stammer.  Sometimes,  however, 
the  first  stammering  is  produced  by  the  child's 
inordinate  haste  to  deliver  himself  of  his  pent- 
up  feelings,  and  the  case  grows  aggravated  by 
repetition  and  by  the  added  fear  on  the  part  of 
the  child  that  he  is  going  to  stammer. 

"This  phenomenon,  however,  is  not  confined 
to  stammerers;  something  very  analogous  is 
responsible  for  much  of  the  stupidity  and  dull- 
ness in  those  pupils  of  whom  we  hear  teachers 
so  constantly  complain.  The  worst  effect  of 
failure  in  any  line  is  not  the  immediate  effect 
but  the  permanent  memory  of  failure,  which 
for  years  blocks  the  way  to  subsequent  success. 
Will  you  not  tell  us  of  your  dull  girl,  Miss  Rus- 
sell? I  shall  be  surprised  if  we  do  not  find 
that  there  are  some  of  the  same  elements  in 
the  case.'' 

"From  your  explanation  of  my  father's  case, 


5O       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

Doctor,  I  think  I  am  beginning-  to  understand 
what  was  the  matter  with  Agnes.  When  she 
came  to  me  a  year  ago,  she  had  just  passed  into 
the  seventh  grade.  She  was  fourteen  years 
old.  large  for  her  age.  and  fond  of  out-door 
sports.  She  was  her  father's  chum  and  could 
throve  a  ball,  drive  a  colt,  or  paddle  a  canoe  as 
well  as  any  boy.  But  in  the  schoolroom  her 
mind  worked  slowly ;  she  had  no  confidence  in 
her  mental  powers ;  her  expression  was  dull,  I 
used  to  think  it  sullen.  She  caused  me  much 
trouble  by  her  fits  of  stubbornness.  When 
called  upon  to  recite  at  these  times,  her  answer 
was  invariably,  'I  don't  know.'  When  I  in- 
sisted upon  her  attempting  to  talk  upon  the 
subject  under  consideration,  she  stood  in  sullen 
silence  and  the  most  I  could  get  from  her  was, 
'yes.  no.'  or  'I  don't  know.'  When  I  persisted 
in  my  attempts  to  get  from  her  some  expression 
of  original  thought,  or  even  a  repetition  of  the 
words  of  the  author  or  of  another  pupil,  she 
grew  tense  and  white  about  the  mouth.  But  I 
stupidly  thought  that  she  was  stubbornly  re- 
sisting my  attempt  to  get  her  to  do  what  she 
was  determined  not  to  do. 


The  Mental  Record  51 

"On  one  of  these  occasions  I  said  to  her,  in 
desperation :  'Agnes,  open  your  book  and  read 
aloud  what  the  author  says.'  She  looked  at 
the  printed  page  for  some  time  without  utter- 
ing a  word,  and  I  wondered  what  she  would  do 
next.  Finally,  the  words  came  with  an  explo- 
sion that  revealed  the  effort  it  required  to 
bring  them  forth,  and  I  was  overwhelmed  with 
remorse  for  my  rash  judgment  and  for  my  un- 
intentional cruelty. 

"From  the  explanation  that  you  have  given 
of  my  father's  case,  I  am  inclined  to  think  that 
Agnes's  vocal  chords  were  paralyzed  by  stage 
fright.  She  knew  that  in  the  schoolroom  she 
was  slow;  and  she  believed  herself  stupid  be- 
cause she  could  not  always  understand  the  les- 
son and  she  could  not  learn  it  unless  she  under- 
stood it.  She  admitted  to  me  afterwards,  in  a 
burst  of  confidence,  that  she  never  really  ex- 
pected to  learn  her  lesson  when  she  sat  down  to 
it ;  and  that  when  called  upon  to  recite  she  was 
unable  to  speak.  The  recitation  period  was  for 
her  one  long-drawn-out  torture  in  which  she 
endured  without  protest  or  explanation,  the 
agonies  of  failure  and  humiliation." 


52       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

"I  have  come  to  think.'''  said  Miss  Ruth, 
"that  the  'I  don't  know,'  of  the  dull  pupil  often 
means  'I  was  not  quite  sure  about  that  when  I 
came  to  class  and  your  calling  upon  me  has 
frightened  away  every  idea  I  had  on  the  sub- 
ject: I  really  can't  think  when  you  and  the 
class  are  looking  at  me.' 

"Indeed,  my  own  college  experience  fur- 
nished an  absurd  illustration  of  this  phase  of 
school  life.  I  felt  myself  weak  in  physics  and 
I  still  stand  in  awe  of  the  Sister  who  taught  it 

o 

— a  most  harmless,  kindly  woman  in  herself. 
She  had  the  unpedagogical  habit  of  first  calling 

-i  O        <J  O 

upon  the  student  who  was  to  talk  and  then  ask- 
ing the  question  or  announcing  the  topic. 
When  she  said.  'Miss  Ruth.'  consternation 
seized  me.  Knowing  no  earthly  power  would 
help  me.  I  raised  my  mind  and  heart  to  heaven 
in  prayer,  and  having  got  my  mind  oft  myself, 
was  able  to  set  it  to  work  when  the  Sister 
ceased  talking.'' 


CHAPTER  IV 

Causes  of  Dullness  in  Children 

''Dr.  Studevan."  said  Mrs.  O'Brien,  ''didn't 
yon  say  last  Friday  evening"  that  frightening 
children  made  them  stupid?  Miles  says  that 
I  was  mistaken  and  that  you  meant  something 
entirely  different.'' 

"I  don't  remember  my  exact  words,  Mrs. 
O'Brien,  but  what  I  meant  was  that  allowing 
children  to  fail  in  the  tasks  set  for  them  at 
sch'XM  is  often  responsible,  in  large  measure, 
for  their  subsequent  dulir.es,-,  and  this  is  par- 
ticularly true  when  the  children  are  whipped  or 
frightened  or  ridiculed  on  account  of  their 
failure.  The  high  emotional  state  in  these 
cases  deepens  the  impression  made  by  the  fail- 
ure and,  renders  it  more  effective  in  prevent- 
ing subsequent  success.  Every  horse  trainer 
knows  this  very  well,  in  breaking-  a  voting 
colt  lie  is  careful  never  to  hitch  him  to  a  load 


54       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

that  he  can't  pull.  And  if  the  colt  happens,  by 
some  mistake,  to  be  hitched  to  a  load  that  is  too 
heavy,  instead  of  whipping  him,  he  soothes 
him  and  unhitches  him.  \Yhen  a  green  hand 
adopts  the  opposite  course  he  makes  the  colt 
balky  and  the  more  lie  beats  him  the  more 
balky  he  becomes.  I  remember  once  seeing  a 
brutal  man  build  a  fire  under  a  balky  horse,  but 
instead  of  going  the  horse  la}'  down  on  the  fire 
and  quenched  it.  The  balky  horse  simply  can 
not  pull.  The  memory  of  his  past  failures  pre- 
vents him  from  liberating  the  nerve  energy  re- 
quired to  move  his  muscles. 

"Of  course  there  are  many  profound  differ- 
ences between  horses  and  children,  but  we  are 
here  dealing  with  a  fundamental  law  of  phys- 
iology that  holds  for  children  and  for  men  as 
rigidly  as  it  holds  for  horses.  It  is  made  man- 
ifest in  the  difference  between  a  defeated  and  a 
victorious  army.  Every  general  knows  that 
victory  adds  to  the  power  of  his  army,  even 
though  it  has  cost  heavily  in  men  and  ammuni- 
tion. The  experience  of  every  day  brings 
home  to  us  the  fact  that  we  rarelv  succeed  in 
doine  anything  that  we  believe  we  can  not  do. 


Causes  of  Dullness  in  Children  55 

Faith  in  ourselves  is  one  of  the  indispensable 

conditions  of  success." 

"I  have  always  thought."  said  the  Judge, 
"that  heredity  had  a  great  deal  to  do  with  stu- 
pidity. The  children  of  some  families  are  all 
bright,  whereas  the  children  of  other  families 
are.  sometimes,  all  stupid." 

"That  doesn't  always  follow,  Papa,  there  are 
five  of  the  McKinnen  children  in  our  school. 
Annie  is  the  brightest  girl  in  her  class,  but  the 
other  four  are  the  trial  of  their  teachers.  They 
have  been  among  the  left-overs  in  each  oTade." 

o 

"And  then  look  at  the  negro  children."  said 
Professor  Shannon,  "it  is  generally  admitted 
that  even  the  brightest  of  them  lack  the  power 
of  sustained  attention  possessed  by  white  chil- 
dren." 

"On  the  other  hand."  said  Miss  Ruth,  "it  is 
frequently  observed  that  the  children  of  gen- 
iuses seldom  amount  to  anything.  "With  a  few 
exceptions,  such  as  the  Herschels.  lather  and 
son.  the  children  of  great  men  are  never  heard 
of.  How  is  this  to  be  accounted  for  if  bright- 
ness or  dullness  is  due  to  heredity?" 

"Halleck  would  seem  to  make  brightness  or 


56       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking'  of  a  Dullard 

dullness  the  result  of  brain  nutrition,1"  said 
Miss  Russell.  ''He  says  that  if  a  person  lives 
on  a  skim-milk  diet,  he  will  think  skim-milk 
thoughts,  and  that  the  nation  proverbially 
known  as  beef  eaters  has  furnished  the  world 
the  greatest  literature  of  all  time." 

''If  we  are  looking  for  the  causes  of  stupid- 
ity,'' said  Mr.  O'Brien,  "would  it  not  be  well 
to  keep  in  mind  laziness,  sheer,  downright  lazi- 
ness?" 

"Laziness  itself  needs  to  be  accounted  for 
•  mite  as  much  as  stupidity."  said  Dr.  Studevan. 
"I  don't  think  we  can  admit  it  among  the  pri- 
mary causes  of  stupidity." 

"In  my  experience,"  said  Miss  Ruth,  "de- 
fective sense  organs,  particular!}-  defective 
sight  and  hearing,  are  frequently  responsible 
for  the  backwardness  of  pupils." 

"Is  not  sickness  often  responsible  for  chil- 
dren's dullness?"  asked  Mrs.  O'Hrien. 

"Yes,"  said  Dr.  Studevan.  "and  we  might  as 
well  add  two  mure  to  those  live  causes  of  stu- 
pidity and  so  complete  the  list  of  capital  sins; 
unfavorable  environment  and  alternating 
phases  of  physical  and  mentai  development. 
)f  we  would  understand  run!  remedy  anv  case 


Causes  of  Dullness  in  Children  57 

of  stupidity  the  first  step  must  be  to  gain  a 
clear  understanding  of  its  cause  or  causes. 
Each  case  has  its  individual  history  and  until 
this  is  mastered  we  are  blundering  in  the 
dark." 

"I  was  as  much  surprised,"  said  Professor 
Shannon,   "as  any  of  you    by    the    references 
which  the  Judge  and  the  Doctor  made  to  their 
own  boyhood,  but  I  took  it  for  granted  that 
they  were  coloring  matters  a  bit,  or  at  least  that 
their  cases  were  very  rare,  until  I  found  this 
article  in  the  Brooklyn  Eagle  last  Sunday.    It  is 
astonishing  how  many  idiots  we  have  amongst 
us.     Just  listen  to  this:  'A  statement  was  re- 
cently made  by  Dr.  Maxwell  to  the  effect  that 
of  the  536,000  pupils  of  Xew  York  City's  pub- 
lic schools  no  less  than  200,000  were  abnormal- 
ly old  for  the  classes  in  which  the}'  were  study- 
ing.' ' 

"Why.  is  it  possible,"  exclaimed  Mrs. 
O'Brien.  "that  nearly  half  of  the  children  of 
Xe\v  York  are  defectives?" 

"Xo.  it  is  not  quite  as  bad  as  that."  replied 
Professor  Shannon.  "The  article  goes  on  to 
stale  that  a  large  part  of  this  is  due  to  the  fact- 


58       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

that  foreign-born  children  are  graded  in  the 

New  York  schools  according  to  their  ability  to 
speak  the  English  language.  But.  after  due  al- 
lowance is  made  for  this,  it  seems  that  the  num- 
ber of  children  with  whom  there  is  something 
wrong  is  very  large. 

"Dr.  Groszmann,  who  is  conducting  a  school 
in  Xew  Jersey  for  atypical  children,  says:  'The 
term  atypical  children  has  been  greatly  mis- 
used. It  has  been  improperly  applied  to  ab- 
normal and  feeble-minded  children  indiscrimi- 
nately. The  atypical  child  proper  deviates 
from  the  average  human  type  to  a  greater  or 
less  degree.  It  does  not  necessarily  mean  be- 
cause a  child  is  atypical  that  its  capabilities  are 
not  so  well  developed  as  those  of  normal  chil- 
dren. Frequently  it  is  over-stimulation  and 
precocity  that  are  the  causes  of  the  child's 
atypic  condition.  Xeurotic  and  neurasthenic 
children  become  atypic,  and  their  nervousness 
is  often  hereditary.  Other  causes  of  atypical 
conditions  are  irritability,  perverse  tendencies, 
fears  and  mental  disturbances.  Another  class 
of  atypical  children  are  those  of  retarded  men- 
tal or  physical  development,  and  sometimes 


Causes  of  Dullness  in  Children  59 

both.  Through  neglect  these  atypical  children 
may  become  permanently  defective  or  morally 
perverse.  Another  division  consists  of  chil- 
dren whose  progress  in  school  was  hindered  by 
a  change  of  schools,  a  slower  rate  of  develop- 
ment, temporary  dullness,  or  physical  difficul- 
ties. Then  there  are  the  children  of  unusually 
rapid  development  without  genuine  precocity, 
children  who  are  difficult  to  manage,  mischiev- 
ous and  spoiled  children.  The  atypical  child 
includes  the  backward  child  who  is  not  neces- 
sarily a  mentally  deficient  child.  The  preco- 
cious child,  or  the  bright  child,  as  we  call  it,  is, 
in  reality,  over-stimulated,  and  in  a  state  of 
constant  nervous  exhaustion.  *  *  *  A  child 
like  this  needs  expert  handling",  for  a  while  it 
may  be  only  pseudo  atypical,  it  is  very  apt  to 
become  genuinely  atypical  or  may  even  degen- 
erate into  an  abnormal  child.' 

"Isn't  Dr.  Groszmann  juggling  with  techni- 
cal terms?"  asked  Miss  Ruth.  "He  takes  as 
his  typical  child  the  average  human  child. 
Xow,  every  body  knows  that  individual  chil- 
dren arc  very  seldom  average  children,  they  all 
depart  more  or  less  from  the  type  that  would  be 


Go       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

a  sort  of  composite  photograph  of  the  group. 
He  might  as  well  make  an  end  of  it  and  say 
that  all  children  are  atypical." 

"He  evidently  means  to  include  only  the 
more  pronounced  departures  from  the  typical 
child.'"  said  Professor  Shannon,  "for  he  makes 
the  statement  elsewhere  in  the  same  article  that 
in  almost  every  classroom  of  the  public  schools 
of  Newark  there  are  from  six  to  seven  mentally 
deficient  children,  some  of  whom  are  even 
designated  as  feeble-minded,  and  he  calculates 
that  there  are  at  least  ten  per  cent  of  the  chil- 
dren of  the  Xew  York  schools  atypical." 

"Isn't  that  a  surprisingly  large  percentage 
of  defective  or  atypical  children,  or  whatever 
yon  choose  to  call  them?"  asked  Mrs.  O'Brien. 
"How  can  it  be  accounted  for?" 

"The  life  of  a  big  city  like  Xew  York,"  said 
Dr.  Studevan,  "is  very  abnormal.  The  mad 
rush  and  hurry  and  the  stress  of  the  struggle 
for  existence  is  enough  to  break  down  the  adult 
mind.  The  effect  of  this  life  is  transmitted  to 
the  nerves  and  brain  of  the  child.  Besides,  a 
big  city  is  the  worst  place  in  the  world  in  which 
to  bring  up  children." 


Causes  of  Dullness  in  Children  61 

"But  aren't  the  public  schools  doing  any- 
thing for  these  children?"  asked  Airs.  O'Brien. 

"Yes,"  said  Dr.  Studevan,  "there  are  many 
attempts  being  made  to  reach  this  class  of  chil- 
dren. In  the  public  school  at  Chatham  Square, 
for  instance,  they  have  a  special  class  for  them 
under  the  care  of  Miss  Farrell.  Before  the 
close  of  school  last  June  I  spent  an  interesting 
day  in  her  classroom.  She  is  \vorking  won- 
ders with  children,  many  of  whom  would  oth- 
erwise find  their  way  into  institutions  for  the 
feeble-minded.*  But  in  Great  Britain  they 
have  progressed  much  farther  with  the  work 
than  we  have.  In  her  report  to  the  New  York 
School  Board,  dated  December,  1903,  Miss 
Farrell  gives  an  excellent  account  of  this  move- 
ment in  England.  The  work  is  some  years 
older  on  the  Continent,  where  the  English  au- 
thorities sent  special  teachers  to  study  the  situa- 
tion before  inaugurating  the  work  for  these 
children  at  home.  'The  work  was  begun  in 
London  in  1802.  Ten  vears  later  there  were 


as  written,  work  similar  to  that  referred 


The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

in  the  Metropolitan  district  of  London  alone, 
fifty  centers  each  having  from  one  to  five  classes 
with  a  total  of  2,359  children  under  instruction. 
By  an  act  of  Parliament  in  1899  this  has  be- 
come a  regular  feature  of  the  elementary 
schools  of  the  kingdom.  An  examination  of 
the  pupils  gathered  into  these  special  classes 
brings  out  the  fact  that  the  defects  are  largely 
due  to  physical  causes.  Neurosis.  St.  Yitus's 
dance,  infantile  paralysis,  epilepsy,  tuberculosis, 
and  other  forms  of  hereditary  disease,  are 
everywhere  in  evidence.  The  thin  arms  and 
legs,  the  pinched,  old-looking  faces,  and  the 
large  joints  of  these  anaemic  children  all  point 
to  inherited  disease,  to  malnutrition,  and  a 
vitiated  atmosphere.  The  evidences  of  sin  and 
poverty  and  ignorance  are  everywhere  mingled 
with  more  or  less  pronounced  marks  of  mental 
deficiency.' 

"In  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  there  was 
started  some  ten  years  ago  a  movement  which 
seems  full  of  promise  for  the  solution  of  this 
problem.  Dr.  Lightner  \Yitmer,  of  the  De- 
partment of  Psychology,  has  taken  up  the  work 
in  a  verv  scientific  wav.  In  March,  1907,  he 


Causes  of  Dullness  in  Children  63 

began  the  publication  of  a  periodical  entitled 
The  Psychological  Clinic,  a  Journal  for  the 
Study  and  Treatment  of  Mental  Retardation 
and  Deviation.  The  Doctor  advocates  'the 
training  of  students  for  a  new  profession — that 
of  the  psychological  expert,  who  should  find  his 
career  in  connection  with  the  school  system, 
through  the  examination  and  treatment  of  men- 
tally and  morally  retarded  children,  or  in  con- 
nection with  the  practice  of  medicine/ 

"I  received  the  first  number  of  the  Psycho- 
logical Clinic  yesterday  and  brought  it  with  me, 
feeling  that  you  would  all  like  to  examine  its 
contents.  Let  me  read  a  few  paragraphs  from 
the  pen  of  Dr.  \Yitmer  in  the  leading  article  of 
this  number:  'During  the  last  ten  years  the 
laboratory  of  Psychology  at  the  University  of 
Pennsylvania  has  conducted  under  my  direc- 
tion, what  T  have  called  "a  psychological  clin- 
ic." Children  from  the  public  schools  of  Phila- 
delphia and  adjacent  cities  have  been  brought 
to  the  laboratory  by  parents  or  teachers :  these 
children  had  made  themselves  conspicuous  be- 
cause of  an  inability  to  progress  in  school  work 
as  rapidly  ns  other  children,  or  because  of  mor- 


64       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

al  defects  which  rendered  them  difficult  to  man- 
age under  ordinary  discipline.  When  brought 
to  the  psychological  clinic,  such  children  are 
given  a  physical  and  mental  examination ;  if  the 
result  of  this  examination  shows  it  to  be  desir- 
able, they  are  then  sent  to  specialists  for  the  eye 
or  the  ear,  for  the  nose  or  throat,  and  for  nerv- 
ous diseases,  one  or  all,  as  each  case  may  re- 
quire. The  result  of  this  conjoint  medical  and 
psychological  examination  is  a  diagnosis  of 
the  child's  mental  and  physical  condition  and 
the  recommendation  of  appropriate  medical 
and  pedagogical  treatment.  The  progress  of 
some  of  these  children  has  been  followed  for  a 
term  of  years.' 

"The  paper  contains  an  account  of  a  number 
of  very  interesting  cases.  The  Doctor  gives 
an  account  of  the  case  which  led  to  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  psvchological  clinic.  'The  sec- 
ond case  to  attract  my  interest  was  a  boy  of 
fourteen  years  of  age,  who  was  brought  to  the 
laboratory  of  Psychology  by  his  grade  teacher. 
He  was  one  of  those  children  of  great  interest 
to  the  teacher,  known  to  the  profession  as  a 


Causes  of  Dullness  in  Children  65 

chronic  bad  speller.  His  teacher,  Miss  Marga- 
ret T.  MagTiire,  now  supervising  principal  of  a 
grammar  school  of  Philadelphia,  was  at  that 
time  a  student  of  psychology  at  the  University 
of  Pennsylvania ;  she  was  imbued  with  the  idea 
that  a  psychologist  should  be  able  through  ex- 
amination, to  ascertain  the  causes  of  a  deficien- 
cy in  spelling  and  to  recommend  the  appro- 
priate treatment  for  its  amelioration  or  cure. 
With  this  case,  in  March,  1896,  the  work  of  the 
psychological  clinic  was  begun.  *  *  *  In  the 
Spring  of  1896,  I  saw  several  other  cases  of 
children  suffering  from  the  retardation  of  some 
special  function,  like  that  of  spelling,  or  from 
general  retardation,  and  I  undertook  the  train- 
ing of  these  children  for  a  certain  number  of 
hours  each  week.  *  *  *  In  addition  to  lecture 
and  laboratory  courses  in  experimental  and 
physiological  psychology,  a  course  in  child 
psychology  was  given  to  demonstrate  the 
various  methods  of  child  psychology,  but  espec- 
ially the  clinical  method.  *  *  *  At  the  clinic 
cases  were  presented  of  children  suffering  from 
defects  of  the  eye,  ear,  deficiency  in  motor  abil- 
itv,  or  in  memory  and  attention  :  and  in  the 


66       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

training  school,  children  were  taught  through- 
out the  session  of  the  summer  school,  receiving- 
pedagogical  treatment  for  the  cure  of  stammer- 
ing and  other  speech  defects,  for  defects  of 
written  language  (such  as  bad  spelling),  and 
for  motor  defects.' 

"This  work  of  Dr.  Witmer's  seems  to  me 
to  hold  out  the  promise  of  great  help  to  the 
dull  and  backward  children  that  have  been  mul- 
tiplying so  rapidly  in  our  schools." 

"These  children/'  said  Mrs.  O'Brien,  "al- 
ways seemed  so  far  away  from  us,  and  I  have 
always  felt  so  hopeless  about  them,  but  if  Dr. 
Studevan  and  the  Judge,  through  mistakes  of 
their  parents  and  teachers,  were  classed  with 
them,  is  it  not  possible  that  many  of  these  chil- 
dren are  there  by  mistake  also?  I  am  more 
curious  than  ever  to  hear  Dr.  Studevan's  ac- 
count of  his  own  boyhood.  Won't  you  please 
tell  us  what  you  remember  of  it,  Doctor?" 

"We  will  keep  Professor  Shannon  still," 
said  Mr.  O'Brien,  "and  see  that  no  one  inter- 
rupts you  while  you  are  giving-  us  the  auto- 
biography of  "Studevan's  omaclhaun."  I  saw  a 
statement  the  other  day  to  the  effect  that  Dr. 


Causes  of  Dullness  in  Children  67 

Joseph  Wright,  Professor  of  Comparative  Phil- 
ology at  Oxford,  was  a  mill  hand  at  the  age  of 
sixteen  and  unable  to  read.  To-day  he  is  one 
of  the  most  learned  men  in  England.  I  would 
give  a  good  deal  for  his  autobiography  to  add 
to  those  of  the  Judge  and  Dr.  Studevan." 


CHAPTER  V 

Alternating  Phases  of  Physical   and  Mental 
Development 

"My  case  seems  very  simple  to  me  now," 
said  Dr.  Studevan,  ''but  it  puzzled  me  for  many 
years.  It  was  only  an  exaggerated  form  of 
what  may  frequently  be  found  in  every  school- 
room in  the  land.  Perhaps  it  \vill  simplify 
matters  if,  at  the  outset,  we  eliminate  a  num- 
ber of  the  usual  causes  of  stupidity  which  had 
no  place  in  my  boyhood. 

"Heredity  was  entirely  in  my  favor.  I  come 
of  a  long-lived,  healthy,  fecund  race.  My  par- 
ents and  grandparents  reached  more  than  the 
allotted  four  score  years.  I  have  been  unable 
to  find  any  trace  of  hereditary  disease  in  any 
branch  of  the  family.  My  ancestors,  as  far 
back  as  I  can  trace  them,  were  well-to-do  far- 
mers. They  were  pious,  practical  Catholics 
who  felt  that  the  greatest  blessing  God  could 
bestowr  upon  them  was  to  call  a  son  to  the 
priesthood  or  a  daughter  to  the  convent. 


Alternating'  Phases  of  Development        69 

"The  physical  environment  of  my  childhood 
and  youth  was  all  that  could  be  desired.  I  was 
born  and  raised  on  a  large  farm  in  one  of  the 
most  picturesque  spots  in  the  park  region  of 
Minnesota.  The  air  was  pure  and  invigorat- 
ing, the  soil  wonderfully  fertile  and  the  scenery 
beautiful.  With  the  changing  seasons  there 
was  a  great  variety  of  occupations  in  all  of 
which  we  kept  very  close  to  nature  and  gener- 
ated excellent  appetites  which  were  appeased 
five  times  a  day  by  an  abundance  of  wholesome 
food. 

"'My  mother  was  an  excellent  cook.  Her 
table  linen  was  always  immaculate.  I  have 
never  since  tasted  such  bread  and  butter  as  she 
made.  There  was  poultry  and  fresh  eggs  and 
home-made-  preserves  in  abundance  all  the  year 
round.  Three  times  a  day  the  table  was  served 
with  fresh  fruits  and  vegetables  in  season  from 
our  own  garden,  with  beef  or  mutton  of  our 
own  raising,  or  home-cured  ham  and  bacon. 
A  bulging  lunch  basket  was  sent  out  to  us  in 
the  fields  every  day  at  ten  and  at  four  o'clock. 
Fresh  milk  was  our  usual  beverage.  Every 
evening  from  the  time  I  was  eight  years  old  un- 
til I  was  sixteen,  on  finishing  mv  share  of  the 


70      The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

milking,  I  used  to  drain  a  brimming  quart  of 
warm  milk,  a  habit,  which  linked  with  my  ap- 
pearance, perhaps,  earned  for  me  the  sobri- 
quet of  'over-grown  calf.' 

"My  health  was  excellent.  Except  for  the 
usual  siege  of  measles  and  whooping  cough  I 
do  not  believe  that  I  was  a  day  ill  during  the 
first  twenty  years  of  my  life.  My  senses  were 
normal.  I  was  not  a  timid  child  and  I  do  not 
remember  that  I  was  ever  frightened,  or  that  I 
suffered  from  any  accident  that  would  account 
for  my  period  of  dullness ;  and  no  one  has  ever 
accused  me  of  being  lazy. 

"So  that  of  the  seven  causes  of  dullness 
enumerated  above,  six,  namely,  heredity,  dis- 
ease, environment,  malnutrition,  defective 
senses,  and  fright,  are  clearly  eliminated.  My 
case  is  thus  a  peculiarly  fortunate  one  in  which 
to  study  the  dullness  that  arises  from  alternat- 
ing phases  of  physical  and  mental  develop- 
ment." 

"If  you  will  pardon  the  interruption,  Doc- 
tor." said  the  Judge.  "I  would  like  to  ask  a 
question.  I  don't  mind  admitting  my  ignor- 
ance of  physiology,  and  I  should  like  to  know 


Alternating  Phases  of  Development        71 

just  what  you  mean  by  the  alternating  phases 
of  physical  and  mental  development." 

"A  full  explanation  of  this  physiological 
phenomenon,  Judge,  would  involve  a  treatise 
on  the  physiology  of  the  nervous  system,  but 
stripped  of  technicalities  the  important  facts  in 
the  case  are  these.  All  vital  functions  are  con- 
trolled by  nerve  currents.  The  quality  and 
quantity  of  every  secretion,  as  well  as  body 
temperature,  respiration,  and  the  circulation  of 
the  blood,  depend  upon  appropriate  nerve  cur- 
rents. And  not  only  this,  but  the  nutrition 
and  growth  of  every  organ  and  gland,  of  every 
cell  in  the  bod}',  are  dependent  upon  the  same 
source.  A  broken  bone,  for  instance,  if  it  be 
deprived  of  its  proper  nerve  supply,  will  never 
heal. 

"On  the  other  hand,  the  process  of  mental 
development,  as  indeed  all  the  phenomena  of 
consciousness,  rest  upon  high  tension  nerve 
currents  in  the  cerebral  cortex.  Now,  it  fre- 
quently happens  that  a  boy  or  girl  grows  very 
rapidly  for  a  few  years,  during  which  period 
the  physical  organism  makes  such  demands 
upon  the  nerve  energy  that  the  cortical  tension 


72       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

is  lowered  and  there  is  not  sufficient  nerve  en- 
ergy left  to  carry  on  the  work  of  rapid  mental 
development. 

"\Ye  all  know  how  injurious  it  is,  for  exam- 
ple, to  indulge  in  mental  work  immediately  af- 
ter eating-  a  hearty  meal.  When  food  enters 
the  stomach  it  originates  nerve  impulses  that 
draw  the  blood  away  from  the  brain  for  use 
in  the  processes  of  digestion.  If  brain  activity 
be  indulged  in  at  this  time,  the  blood  is  with- 
drawn from  the  viscera  and  forced  into  the 
brain  under  an  increased  pressure  to  furnish 
the  required  nerve  energy  and  thus  the  diges- 
tive process  is  delayed  and  sometimes  the  di- 
gestive apparatus  itself  is  injured. 

"Xow,  we  have  a  similar  conflict  going  on 
between  mental  and  physical  development.  It 
seldom  happens  that  during  childhood  and 
youth  the  balance  is  preserved  between  the 
growth  and  development  of  the  body  and  the 
growth  and  development  of  the  mental  proc- 
esses. The  extent  to  which  this  balance  is 
disturbed  and  the  length  of  time  that  each 
phase  contiues  varies  within  wide  limits." 


CHAPTER  VI 

The  Atypical  Child  in  School 

"If  you  exclude  the  children  who  have  be- 
come dullards  through  any  one  of  the  six 
causes  just  enumerated,  and  arrange  the  chil- 
dren in  any  third  or  fourth  grade  room  in  ac- 
cordance with  their  physical  development,  you 
will  find  them  fairly  well  classified  inversely  as 
their  mental  capacity,  that  is,  the  brightest  chil- 
dren will  be  the  smallest  and  the  largest  chil- 
dren will  be  the  dullest.  Here  and  there  puz- 
zling exceptions  to  this  rule  will  be  found,  but 
these  are  not  sufficient  to  obscure  the  general 
truth. 

"The  eagerness  and  ambition  of  the  smaller 
children,  coupled  with  their  quickness  of  move- 
ment, indicate  high  cortical  tension.  If  these 
children  are  constantly  over  stimulated,  as  fre- 
quently happens,  their  physical  development 
may  be  retarded  for  some  years.  In  extreme 
cases  the}'  are  to  be  found  among  those  chil- 
dren whom  over-fond  mothers  are  in  the  habit 


74       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

of  regarding  as  too  bright  or  too  good  for  this 
world.  Less  aggravated  cases  not  infrequent- 
ly result  in  permanent  invalidism.  This  is 
particularly  true  of  girls  when  the  period  of 
over  stimulation  is  carried  beyond  the  twelfth 
or  the  fourteenth  year.  If  these  precocious  lit- 
tle ones  escape  disease  and  death  from  over 
stimulation  they  will  finally  reach  a  time  in 
which  the  balance  swings  in  the  opposite  direc- 
tion and  physical  development,  so  long  re- 
tarded, sets  in  with  unusual  rapidity.  The  en- 
suing mental  phase  is  characterized  by  lack  of 
energy  which  to  the  uninstructed  is  pure  lazi- 
ness. 

"If  the  pupils  are  at  this  time  entrusted  to 
incompetent  teachers  the  discouragement  into 
which  they  fall  is  likely  to  degenerate  into  per- 
manent dullness  from  which  they  make  no 
further  effort  to  escape.  And  thus  it  happens 
that  precocious  children  are  seldom  heard  from 
in  after  life.  I  am  quite  convinced,  however, 
that  when  the  precociousness  is  not  clue  to  in- 
herited or  acquired  disease  this  result  may  be 
prevented  by  competent  teachers.  But  in  the 


The  Atypical  Child  in  School  75 

present  condition  of  our  schools  the  chances  of 
permanent  success  are  much  better  where  the 
physical  development  of  the  child  is  in  the 
ascendant  during  the  early  years  of  school  life. 
Here  the  danger  to  health  from  over  stimula- 
tion is  avoided  and  when  at  last  the  processes 
of  physical  development  begin  to  slow  up,  if 
the  discouragement  is  not  too  deep,  mental  life 
may  awaken  to  a  new  vigor. 

"Either  extreme,  however,  is  difficult  to  man- 
age and  may  prove  dangerous  in  the  hands  of 
incompetent  or  careless  teachers.  A  balance 
between  the  two  processes  of  development  is 
the  safest  and  may  be  considered  the  condition 
of  typical  children.  The  development  of  these 
children  should  accordingly  determine  the  work 
of  the  grade  and  their  condition  should  form 
the  ideal  towards  which  the  teacher  should  con- 
santly  strive  to  lead  the  developmental  pro- 
cesses in  the  atypical  children." 

"The  atypical  children,"  said  Miss  Ruth. 
"are  the  cause  of  most  of  the  difficulty  in  every 
schoolroom.  If  the  children  could  all  be  made 
typical  by  any  treatment  of  the  teacher,  there 
would  be  no  hesitancy  on  her  part  to  apply  the 


76       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

treatment.  But  even  prescinding  from  the 
children  whose  condition  is  traceable  to  disease 
or  malnutrition,  what  can  the  teacher  do  for 
these  cases  of  unbalanced  developmental  ten- 
dencies?" 

"'Where  there  is  no  other  complication,  she 
can  keep  these  precocious  children  from  injur- 
ing their  health  by  over  work  and  she  can  save 
both  the  undersized  precocious  children  and  the 
overgrown  dull  children  from  permanent  dull- 
ness. Once  she  understands  the  case  her  meth- 
od of  treatment  is  perfectly  clear.  The  preco- 
cious child  must  be  guarded  against  over  stim- 
ulation and  the  dull  pupil  must  be  kept  from 
discouragement." 

"Do  you  mean,"  asked  Miss  Russell,  "that 
the  brighter  pupils  should  be  retarded  in  their 
progress  so  that  the  dull  ones  may  not  be  dis- 
couraged? Is  the  encouragement  of  the  dull 
pupil,  rather  than  the  strict  exercise  of  justice, 
the  first  duty  of  the  teacher?  Of  course  justice 
demands  that  encouragement  be  given  to  the 
less  bright,  but  does  it  not  also  require  that  dis- 
couragement be  not  given  to  the  brighter 
pupils  ?" 


The  Atypical  Child  in  School  77 

"These  are  far-reaching  questions/'  replied 
the  Doctor.  'T  shall  endeavor  to  answer  them 
somewhat  more  fully  at  another  time  in  connec- 
tion with  concrete  cases.  Here  I  merely  wish 
to  register  a  protest  against  two  procedures 
which  frequently  obtain  in  our  schools.  Some 
teachers  insist  that  the  instruction  and  the  work 
of  the  room  should  be  measured  by  the  capacity 
of  the  dullest  pupils,  while  a  still  larger  num- 
ber of  teachers  fit  the  work  to  the  needs  of 
the  majority.  The  motto  of  the  teacher  should 
not  be  the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  num- 
ber but  the  greatest  good  of  the  whole  num- 
ber. 

'T  do  not  see  that  the  interests  of  any  of  the 
children  concerned  are  sacrificed  by  the  method 
of  treatment  which  I  have  just  proposed.  The 
b'est  interests  of  the  very  bright  pupils  are 
not  served  by  pushing  them  up  through  the 
grades  as  rapidly  as  possible.  Where  this  is 
done  it  is  difficult  to  avoid  over  stimulation 
and  when,  at  a  later  time,  the  physical 
development  of  these  children  sets  in.  it 
is  quite  impossible  to  save  them  from  discour- 


78      The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

agement.  They  are  too  far  along  in  their 
course  and  now  find  themselves  unable  to  keep 
pace  with  their  little  classmates.  The  defeat 
and  humiliation  resulting  from  their  failure 
are  likely  to  prove  a  permanent  hindrance  to 
their  further  mental  development.  Of  course 
it  will  not  do  to  let  the  bright  children  culti- 
vate habits  of  idleness,  but  the  resourceful 
teacher  will  find  little  difficulty  in  keeping  these 
children  busy  with  collateral  work.  The  pre- 
cocious children  will  thus  lay  up  treasures 
against  the  day  of  need. 

''The  dull  pupils  must  not  be  given  tasks 
above  their  present  ability  and  the  competent 
teacher  will  do  everything  in  her  power  to 
encourage  and  to  stimulate  them  and  to 
awaken  their  interest  in  the  subjects  taught. 
She  will  be  particularly  careful  to  avoid  hu- 
miliating them  by  putting  them  into  compe- 
tition with  children  who  are,  for  the  time  be- 
ing, their  superiors  mentally.  In  this  way  in- 
justice is  clone  to  no  pupil  and  the  interests 
of  all  are  safeguarded." 

"I  thank  you.  Doctor,"  said  the  Judge,  ''"'for 


The  Atypical  Child  in  School  79 

your  explanation  of  these  unbalanced  develop- 
mental tendencies,  but  I  am  afraid  that  the 
ladies  will  not  forgive  me  for  diverting  you 
from  the  story-  of  your  boyhood/' 

"That  story  will  keep  for  another  time,"  re- 
plied the  Doctor.  "It  is  too  late  to  begin  on 
it  tonight." 


CHAPTER  VII 
Early  Memory  Pictures 

"You  were  never  more  welcome.  Doctor," 
said  Mr.  O'Brien.  "We  had  begun  to  fear 
that  you  would  desert  us  tonight.  Come,  take 
this  chair.  The  glowing  embers  will  stimu- 
late your  imagination  and  help  to  bring  back 
the  scenes  of  your  childhood,  in  which  we 
have  all  grown  deeply  interested.  Dido's  court 
was  not  more  attentive  to  Aeneas  describing 
the  fall  of  Troy  than  will  be  your  audience 
tonight  if  you  will  tell  us.  as  you  have  prom- 
ised to  do,  how  you  came  to  be  known  as  an 
omadhaun  and  how  you  were  rescued  from 
permanent  imbecility." 

"That  task  is  soon  accomplished,"  replied  the 
Doctor.  "I  was  known  as  an  omadhaun  from 
the  age  of  nine  to  seventeen  because  I  was  an 
omadhaun  during  those  years ;  and  of  all  peo- 


Early  [Memory  Pictures  81 

pie  in  the  world  an  omadhaun  is  the  least 
able  to  conceal  his  mental  condition.  And  as 
to  my  'rescue',  that  hardly  describes  the  oc- 
currence; I  simply  grew  out  of  the  condition." 

"Oh,  please.  Doctor,"  said  Miss  Russell, 
"tell  us  about  your  childhood.  You  know  you 
promised  to  give  us  all  the  details  of  your  case, 
and  I  have  been  simply  consumed  with  curi- 
osity for  the  last  two  weeks." 

"I,  too,  have  been  looking  forward  to  this 
evening,"  said  Miss  Ruth.  "The  child  has 
come  to  be  the  center  of  all  educational  en- 
deavor in  our  day,  hence  it  is  a  matter  of  the 
greatest  importance  to  all  of  us  who  have  to 
deal  with  children  to  be  able  to  understand 
how  the  child  looks  out  upon  the  world,  to 
recognize  the  elements  in  his  developing  mind 
and  character  that  are  valuable  and  that  should 
be  cultivated,  and  also  to  be  able  to  recognize 
those  other  elements  which  we  should  as  con- 
stantly seek  to  eliminate." 

"I  quite  agree  with  you,"  said  the  Doctor, 
"and  while  it  has  become  the  fashion  for  teach- 
ers to  read  manv  volumes  on  child  studv.  T 


82       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

believe  that  every  teacher  could  use  some  of 
this  time  to  greater  advantage  in  making  ex- 
cursions into  his  own  childhood.  If  he  learns 
to  read  and  understand  all  that  he  there  finds 
he  will  be  provided  with  a  private  key  that 
\vill  give  him  ready  admission  to  the  minds  and 
hearts  of  the  children  who  are  committed  to 
his  care. 

"1  am  not  at  all  disposed  to  slip  away  from 
telling  the  story  of  my  childhood,  but  after  I 
have  served  up  my  own  childhood  and  youth 
and  dissected  them  and  demonstrated  to  you 
the  making  and  the  unmaking  of  a  dullard,  I 
shall  exact  a  similar  accounting  from  the 
other  members  of  this  group.  The  chief  in- 
terest in  my  case  comes  from  the  fact  that  the 
dullards  are  usually  the  greatest  trial  of  every 
teacher.  \Ve  must  not.  however,  make  the 
mistake  of  supposing  that  a  study  of  the  dul- 
lard will  provide  us  with  a  full  understand- 
ing of  the  more  normal  types  of  children." 

"The  story,  Studevan,  the  story,"  said  Pro- 
fessor Shannon. 

"Yes.     let's     have     the     story,"     said     Mr. 


Early  Memory  Pictures  83 

O'Brien,  "and  we  shall  do  the  philosophizing 

afterward." 

"As  far  as  I  can  discover,  my  childhood  up 
to  my  ninth  year  differed  from  that  of  other 
children  in  no  important  respect,"  said  the 
Doctor.  "There  are  a  few  incidents  in  it,  how- 
ever, which  have  helped  me  to  understand  the 
later  developments.  As  the  waters  of  oblivion 
gradually  creep  up  over  our  childhood,  a  few 
of  the  higher  peaks  of  experience  remain  above 
the  waves.  These  islands  are  very  interesting 
to  all  students  of  child  nature  for  they  are 
frequently  filled  with  treasures.  Just  as  the 
islands  out  from  the  mainland  preserve  for  us 
a  record  of  the  fauna  and  flora  that  flour- 
ished before  the  islands  became  separated  from 
the  mainland,  so  these  isolated  memories  of 
childhood  freijuently  reveal  to  us  early  atti- 
tudes of  mind  and  early  tendencies  which  it 
is  not  possible  to  obtain  anywhere  else  in  an 
unmodified  form.  This  is  well  illustrated  in 
the  brief  life  of  St.  Thomas  which  is  given  in 
the  second  nocturn  for  his  feast. 

''The  biographer  of  the  saint  tells  us  that 


84       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking-  of  a  Dullard 

while  he  was  still  an  infant  in  arms  he  found 
a  piece  of  parchment  on  which  was  written  the 
Hail  Mary.  The  child  clutched  it  in  his  little 
hand  and  would  not  relinquish  it  to  the  nurse, 
and  when  his  mother  took  it  away  from  him 
by  force  he  became  so  convulsed  with  sobs  and 
tears  that  she  was  obliged  to  return  it  to  him, 
whereupon  he  immediately  swallowed  it.  The 
same  biographer  tells  us  that  while  the  saint 
was  in  his  early  teens  he  joined  the  Dominican 
order  against  the  wishes  of  his  family.  His 
superiors  sent  him  with  another  Brother  to 
Paris  to  complete  his  studies.  His  family 
waylaid  him  on  his  journey  through  Italy  and 
imprisoned  him  in  one  of  their  castles.  Here 
they  resorted  to  every  conceivable  means  of  di- 
verting' him  from  his  purpose  b'ut  without 
avail.  The  biographer  finds  in  the  first  of  these 
incidents  an  indication  of  the  saint's  future 
love  and  devotion  to  the  Mother  of  God,  and 
in  the  latter  incident  he  finds  a  triumph  of 
grace  so  great  that  it  earned  for  the  saint 
permanent  immunity  from  certain  forms  of 
temptation. 


Early  Memory  Pictures  85 

"One  need  not  deny  the  operations  of  grace 
in  these  incidents  and  yet  find  in  them  natural 
indications  of  the  saint's  character.  Had  he 
been  an  ordinary  child  his  behavior  might  ap- 
pear to  many  as  an  indication  of  bad  temper, 
and  his  determined  opposition  to  the  wishes  of 
his  family  in  any  one  but  a  saint  \voukl  prob- 
ably be  considered  a  manifestation  of  self-will 
and  stubborness.  In  any  case,  the  incidents 
show  the  child  and  the  youth  to  be  possessed 
of  a  strong  will  and  a  determined  character, 
two  qualities  that,  after  the  operations  of  di- 
vine grace,  are  probably  responsible  in  no  small 
measure  for  the  saint's  greatness. 

"I  only  remember  two  incidents  in  my  own 
life  before  I  was  six  years  old.  And  neither 
of  these,  I  am  sorry  to  say.  offers  any  discov- 
erable indication  of  future  sanctity.  \\  hen  I 
was  three  years  and  ten  months  old  our  family 
moved  three  or  four  miles  to  a  neighboring 
farm.  Many  of  the  incidents  of  that  moving 
come  to  ine  now  as  if  they  took  phce  but  yes- 
terday. I  can  see  the  kitchen  in  the  old  house 
as  it  appeared  to  me  on  lea\  ing  it  that  morn- 


86       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

ing.  The  empty  wood  box  was  in  its  place 
behind  the  stove;  the  plaster  was  knocked  off 
the  wall  just  above  it.  Outside  the  door  there 
was  a  broad  step,  at  one  end  of  which  was  an 
inverted  broken  shovel  that  had  served  for 
many  years  in  scraping  the  mud  from  the  fam- 
ily shoes. 

"There  was  a  light  snow  on  the  ground.  In 
the  front  yard  there  was  a  mule  team  hitched 
to  a  wagon  that  was  piled  high  with  furniture 
and  boxes ;  behind  this  there  was  an  ox  team 
hitched  to  an  empty  bob-sled.  My  parents  in- 
tended that  I  should  ride  in  the  bob'-sled  with 
my  mother  and  the  younger  members  of  the 
family,  but  I  resisted  this  with  so  much  an- 
ger, reinforced  with  kicks  and  tears  and  sobs, 
that  I  finally  obtained  my  own  way  and  was 
allowed  to  take  my  place  beside  the  driver  on 
the  high  seat  behind  the  mule  team. 

"In  our  journey  we  crossed  the.  railroad 
track  and  I  can  still  see  those  two  bright  bands 
of  steel  as  they  seemed  to  approach  each  other 
in  the  distance.  I  retain  a  clear  memory  of  my 
feelings  as  I  clung  to  the  back  of  the  seat  while 


Early  Memory  Pictures  87 

the  wagon  jolted  over  the  frozen  ground,  and 
of  my  relief  when  Jake  lifted  me  down  from 
the  high  seat.  My  limbs  were  numb  from 
the  long  cold  ride. 

"We  entered  the  front  yard  through  a  wicket 
that  sagged  open  on  its  leather  hinges.  I  can 
still  see  the  pebbles  on  the  path  and  every  de- 
tail of  the  front  room  as  we  entered  it.  Mr. 
Piper,  the  former  owner,  was  standing1  with 
his  back  to  the  wall  looking  up  at  a  pipe  pro- 
tector in  the  ceiling'  with  its  circlet  of  little 
holes. 

"The  other  incident  to  which  I  referred  oc- 
curred some  eighteen  months  later.  At  that 
time  I  was  the  proud  possessor  of  two  pairs 
of  home-made,  rusty  brown  breeches.  I  re- 
member it  was  an  autumn  day  and  I  was  keep- 
ing guard  over  the  pair  of  breeches  that 
had  just  left  the  wash  tub  and  was  dry- 
ing on  the  clothes  horse  behind  the  kitchen 
stove.  -I  had  determined  that  my  wardrobe 
should  not  he  depleted  even  to  rescue  my  little 
brother  from  the  ignominy  of  petticoats. 

"But.  alas,  courage  was  never  vet  a  match 


88       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

for  woman's  wiles.  When  the  garment  was 
about  dry.  one  of  my  sisters  promised  to  mount 
guard  for  me  while  the  other  induced  me  to 
accompany  her  to  the  corn  crib  where,  for  half 
an  hour.  I  stood  fascinated  by  the  golden  ears 
as  they  came  in  through  the  window  from  my 
father's  scoop  shovel  in  showers  and  rolled 
down  the  pile  of  corn.  On  my  return  to  the 
house  I  found  that  I  had  been  basely  betrayed ; 
my  little  brother  was  strutting  around  in  my 
newly  ironed  trousers,  and  my  anger  rose  to 
the  breaking  point. 

"The  trivial  details  of  these  memory  pic- 
tures are  sufficient  evidence  that  we  must  look 
elsewhere  than  to  the  importance  of  the  sub- 
ject matter  for  the  causes  of  the  permanency 
of  the  mental  record.  The  high  emotional  ten- 
sion acts  as  a  fixing  agent,  leaving  upon 
the  mind  an  indelible  record  of  all  the  associ- 
ated images.  It  is  only  the  strongest  qualities 
of  character  that  oppose  high  resistance  and 
thus  generate  high  emotional  states. 

1  he     fn^t     of     these     incidents     indicates 
strength    of   \vili   and   perseverance,    two   traits 


Early  Memory  Pictures  89 

which  are  largely  responsible  for  my  final 
escape  from  dullarddom.  The  betrayal  of  the 
child's  confidence  and  the  invasion  of  what  lie 
considered  his  personal  rights  were  responsible 
for  the  second  memory  picture  and  indicate, 
by  the  indignation  which  they  aroused  in  the 
boy,  traits  of  character  which  are  scarcely  less 
important." 

"Yon  draw  your  conclusions  so  rapidly. 
Doctor."  said  Miss  Ruth,  "that  I  find  myself 
unable  to  keep  up  with  you.  If  the  permanency 
and  detail  of  the  first  memory  picture  are  due 
to  high  emotional  tension,  how  are  we  to  ac- 
count for  the  child's  rememb'ering  the  inci- 
dents of  the  journey,  such  as  the  crossing  of 
the  railroad,  and  the  incidents  at  the  termina- 
tion of  the  journey  which  must  have  occurred 
some  hours  later?  Yet  there  is  apparently  as 
vivid  a  rememberance  of  the  leather  hinges  on 
the  open  wicket,  of  the  pebbles  on  the  path. 
:ind  of  Mr.  Piper  looking  up  at  the  ceiling,  as 
there  is  of  the  wood-box,  of  the  shovel  doing 
service  as  a  scraper,  or  of  the  two  teams  before 
the  door.  Emotional  states  are  notoriously 


90       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

short  lived  in  children.  However  high  the 
child's  anger  may  have  mounted  when  he  was 
fighting  for  his  own  way,  it  must  have  disap- 
peared as  rapidly  as  an  April  shower  when  he 
was  placed  beside  the  driver." 

"That  is  all  true,"  replied  the  Doctor,  "and 
had  no  other  high  emotional  states  ensued,  the 
memory  picture  would  doubtless  have  ended 
with  his  anger  as  soon  as  he  was  placed  beside 
the  driver.  But  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  that 
journey  was  probably  the  child's  first  excur- 
sion into  the  unknown  outer  world  where 
everything  was  new  and  strange.  He  would 
have  been  unobservant  and  phlegmatic  indeed 
had  he  remained  calm  throughout  the  journey. 

"Besides,  there  was  another  element  in  the 
situation  which  must  not  be  lost  sight  of.  In 
the  old  days  when  we  wished  to  determine 
which  pup  out  of  the  litter  to  raise,  we  used 
to  catch  each  one  of  them  in  turn  by  the  scruff 
of  the  neck  and  hold  it  out  at  arm's  length;  the 
pups  that  squealed  were  drowned  ;  the  pups  that 
had  grit  enough  to  keep  their  mouths  shut 
were  raised. 


Early  Memory  Pictures  91 

"Do  you  remember  your  emotions  the  first 
time  that  you  found  yourself  on  some  dizzy 
height?  Had  the  child  been  put  up  on  the 
high  seat  without  having  struggled  for  it,  the 
chances  are  that  as  soon  as  the  wagon  began 
to  move,  or  as  soon  as  the  wheels  struck  the 
first  stone,  he  would  have  cried  out  to  be 
taken  down.  But  he  had  committed  himself 
and  so  all  his  pride  was  aroused  and  all  the 
strength  of  will  that  he  possessed  was  sum- 
moned to  control  his  fear  on  that  long  and 
perilous  ride.  The  emotional  tension  gene- 
rated from  these  two  sources  probably  re- 
mained high  to  the  end  of  the  journey  and  thus 
made  a  permanent  record  of  all  the  trivial  in- 
cidents that  occurred." 


CHAPTER  VIII 
The  Making  of  a  Dullard 

"P>ut  to  return  to  my  story.  I  was  six  years 
and  four  months  old  when  I  entered  school  for 
the  first  time.  It  was  a  little  village  school 
having-  but  a  single  room,  one  teacher  and  sixty 
or  seventy  pupils. 

"I  had  learned  to  read  at  home  and  was  read- 
ing in  Wilson's  First  Reader.  I  was  soon  pro- 
moted to  Wilson's  Second  Reader  and  before 
the  end  of  the  year,  probably  because  there 
was  only  one  other  pupil  in  the  class,  I  was  pro- 
moted, with  my  companion,  to  the  National 
Third  Reader.  The  break  between  these  two 
readers  was  very  great.  Wilson's  Second 
Reader  was  a  simple  affair,  not  much  more 
difficult  than  the  primer  of  the  National  Series, 
whereas  the  National  Third  Reader  was  made 
ii")  of  selections  from  the  Enlish  Classics. 


The  Making  of  a  Dullard  93 

"This  was  the  first  serious  mistake  that  the 
teacher  made  in  my  regard.  The  book  was 
altogether  too  difficult  for  me.  I  had  little  or 
no  comprehension  of  the  sub'ject-matter  of  the 
lesson  and  the  words  were  frequently  too  diffi- 
cult for  me  to  pronounce.  My  hesitating  and 
stumbling  rapidly  developed  into  what  my 
teachers  and  parents  called  a  'stoppage  in  my 
speech.'  The  humiliation  of  defeat  began  to 
settle  into  a  permanent  distaste  for  reading  and 
a  permanent  discouragement  concerning  my 
ability  in  that  direction. 

"I  fared  better  in  the  other  branches.  I  knew 
my  catechism  by  heart  before  I  was  nine  years 
old.  I  could  spell  and  give  the  synonyms  for 
most  of  the  words  in  Saunders'  Speller,  and 
I  usually  maintained  my  place  fairly  well  in 
the  'spelling  down'  matches  that  were  a  regu- 
lar feature  of  the  school.  My  work  in  arith- 
metic was  considered  good  ;  I  had  finished  long 
division  and  was  working  in  fractions  before  I 
was  nine  years  old.  Our  geography  work,  of 
course,  consisted  in  the  usual  drill  of  those 
days  in  bounding  states,  naming  capitals  and 


94       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

giving  a  long  series  of  definitions  of  geograph- 
ical terms." 

"Oh,  I  misunderstood  you,"  said  Miss  Rus- 
sell, "I  thought  you  said  the  other  evening  that 
you  had  to  learn  the  multiplication  table  when 
you  were  seventeen  years  old  and  that  you 
were  then  unable  to  read." 

"Perhaps  I  did  say  so,"  replied  the  Doctor, 
"but  if  I  did,  let  me  modify  the  statement.  I 
had  to  relearn  the  multiplication  table  and  re- 
learn  to  read  when  I  was  seventeen.  During 
the  years  that  intervened  I  had  practically  for- 
gotten everything  that  I  had  learned  in  those 
first  three  years  at  school." 

"How  did  that  happen  ?"  asked  Mrs. 
O'Brien.  "From,  what  you  have  just  told  us, 
you  must  have  been  as  bright  as  the  average 
child  up  to  the  time  you  were  nine  years  old. 
Did  you  suffer  from  an  accident  at  that  time?" 

"No,  there  was  no  accident.  My  dullness 
came  on  gradually  and  I  have  no  distinct  re- 
membrance of  the  stages  in  the  process.  Read- 
ing, as  I  have  said,  was  the  only  subject  in 
which  I  have  a  clear  remembrance  of  failure, 


The  Making-  of  a  Dullard  95 

and  that  left  with  me  a  deep  and  abiding  sense 
of  shame  and  discouragement. 

''In  the  closing  months  of  my  ninth  year  I 
remember  that  the  other  boys  used  to  tease  me 
and  play  tricks  on  me  and  get  me  into  frequent 
fights.  I  think  I  must  have  been  growing  very 
rapidly  during  this  time  and  probably  ceased 
to  make  progress  in  all  the  school  subjects. 

"However  this  may  be,  on  the  completion  of 
my  ninth  year  T  was  kept  home  from  school 
and  put  to  work  on  the  farm.  I  did  not  dis- 
cover the  reason  for  this  until  I  was  about 
fourteen  years  old.  I  was  not  at  all  sorry  for 
the  change,  however,  as  I  had  grown  to  dread 
school  and  to  hate  it.  The  fields  were  far  more 
attractive  to  me. 

"I  was  given  a  team  to  drive  and  dressed  out 
in  an  over-all  suit  I  felt  myself  quite  a  man. 
I  used  to  got  up  in  the  manger  to  put  the 
bridles  on  the  horses  and  I  had  some  difficulty 
in  harnessing  them.  I  would  give  much  for  a 
series  of  photographs  of  myself  at  that  time 
and  for  a  record  of  my  weight  and  height,  b'ut 
unfortunately  none  of  these  are  available. 


96       The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

"At  thirteen  years  I  weighed  one  hundred 
and  sixty  pounds ;  at  fourteen  I  was  my  pres- 
ent height,  five  feet,  ten  inches.  At  thirteen  I 
was  very  strong  physically;  indeed  I  did  a 
man's  work  in  nearly  every  employment  on  the 
farm. 

"My  nerve  energy  must  have  been  all  used  in 
building  up  my  physical  frame.  The  tension 
was  so  low  that  there  was  not  even  a  good 
muscle  tonus.  I  retain  a  vivid  memory  picture 
of  myself  at  that  time.  I  was  raw-boned  and 
lanky;  my  lower  jaw  hung  down  continually; 
the  lower  lip  was  heavy  and  usually  sunburned 
during  the  summer  season.  I  remember  my 
difficulty  in  keeping  it  covered  with  the  skin 
of  an  egg  to  protect  it  from  the  sun  and  wind. 

"I  spoke  but  seldom,  and  when  I  did  attempt 
to  talk,  even  the  members  of  my  own  family 
found  some  difficulty  in  understanding  me.  The 
boys  used  to  mock  me  so  that  I  grew  afraid 
of  the  sound  of  my  own  voice.  I  would  not 
dare  attempt  to  hum  or  whistle  a  tune.  I  was 
taken  to  church  every  Sunday  but  I  was  shy 
and  avoided  speaking  to  any  one. 


The  Making  of  a  Dullard  97 

"I  had  practically  no  boy  playmates  during 
these  years.  The  neighboring  boys  frequently 
gathered  in  our  pasture  on  Sunday  afternoons 
to  play  ball,  but  I  was  seldom  allowed  to  take 
part  in  the  game  and  I  was  never  allowed  to 
visit  or  to  go  away  from  home." 

"Didn't  you  say  the  other  evening,"  asked 
Miss  Ruth,  "that  you  returned  to  school  when 
vou  were  thirteen  ?" 


CHAPTER  IX 


"When  I  was  thirteen  years  old,  in  slipping 
off  a  load  of  hay  one  day,  my  foot  caught  in 
the  rack  and  I  was  thrown  out  on  my  side  up 
on  the  frozen  ground.  I  was  not  seriously  in- 
jured except  that  my  left  wrist  was  dislocated. 
The  week  following  I  was  sent  to  school  with 
my  arm  in  a  sling.  My  family  was  anxious 
that  1  should  be  prepared  for  Confirmation  and 
they  still  entertained  a  lingering  hope  that  I 
might  learn  enough  of  the  three  R's  t<>  get 
along  on  the  farm.  The  teacher  was  very  kind 
to  me:  she  gave  me  a  great  deal  of  individual 
attention  and  tried  during  the  recesses  and 
after  school  hours  to  get  me  started  in  arith- 
metic. T  do  not  remember  that  I  made  much 
progress. 

"One  day  in  the  reading  class  I  was  trying 
to  induce  a  companion  to  give  me  some  candy. 


Into  the  Depths  99 

When  he  refused  I  made  a  gesture  that  wasn't 
quite  nice  and  T  was  instantly  aware  that  the 
teacher  had  seen  me.  T  was  ashamed  of  mv- 
self  and  as  sorry  as  I  could  be:  I  was  also 
afraid  of  being  punished.  It  was  Friday  eve- 
ning and,  when  I  got  away  from  school  without 
anything  being  said,  I  congratulated  myself 
on  my  fortunate  escape  and  I  resolved  never 
to  do  it  again.  On  the  following  Monday 
morning  things  went  on  as  usual  and  I  felt 
quite  sure  that  the  teacher  had  decided  to  over- 
look my  offence,  but  at  the  noon  recreation  she 
asked  me  to  remain  in  my  place  when  she  dis- 
missed the  other  pupils,  and  then  I  knew  that 
my  hope  had  been  vain. 

"She  reasoned  with  me  and  I  suppose  she  ex- 
pected me  to  cry,  but  that  wasn't  in  my  line.  I 
was  silent  and  hung  my  head  in  shame  and  if 
she  had  had  the  good  sense  to  let  the  matter 
rest  there  things  might  have  been  very  different 
with  me:  or  if  she  had  not  alluded  to  it  at  all 
it  would  have  been  infinitely  better.  But  she 
went  on  lecturing  me  and  finally  made  the  un- 
pardonable blunder  of  comparing  me  with  my 


ioo     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

older  brother,  whereupon  all  my  contrition  in- 
stantly changed  to  defiance.  She  saw  the 
change  in  my  attitude  without  understanding 
its  cause  and  concluded,  as  she  said,  that  as 
scolding  was  useless  she  would  see  what  a 
whipping  would  do. 

"She  was  a  muscular  woman  and  enjoyed  a 
well  deserved  reputation  for  her  ability  to 
wield  a  black  walnut  ruler  about  two  feet  long, 
an  inch  and  a  half  wide  and  a  quarter  of  an 
inch  thick.  She  ordered  me  to  hold  out  my 
hand  and,  rising  on  her  tiptoes,  she  came  down 
with  all  her  might.  Xo  boy  in  the  school  was 
ever  known  to  wait  for  a  second  application  of 
that  ruler,  but  I  sullenly  held  my  hand  in  the 
same  position  and  looked  the  defiance  that  I 
felt.  My  attitude  angered  her  and  she  applied 
the  ruler  the  second  time  with  no  better  effect. 
I  believe  I  would  have  stood  there  until  she  had 
exhausted  her  strength,  but  she  ordered  me  to 
leave  the  room.  The  blood  was  just  trickling 
through  the  skin  and  my  hand  was  swollen  for 
some  days  afterward. 

"After  this  occurrence  I  made  no  further  at- 


Into  the  Depths  101 

tempt  to  work  in  school.  I  was  in  a  state  of 
sullen  defiance  and  my  old  hatred  of  the  school 
had  revived  with  increased  force.  Some  weeks 
later  I  was  taken  out  of  school  and  put  to  work 
in  the  fields.  'And  the  last  state  of  that  man  is 
made  worse  than  the  first.' 

"While  I  grew  to  hate  intensely  everything 
connected  with  the  school,  I  never  really 
blamed  the  teacher.  I  knew  that  my  conduct 
deserved  the  punishment  and  I  took  it  as  a 
matter  of  course,  but  I  was  thoroughly  discour- 
aged, nevertheless,  and  I  was  delighted  to  es- 
cape from  the  school  and  its  humiliations  and 
burdens. 

"As  I  look  back  now  I  realize,  of  course,  that 
the  teacher  made  a  mistake.  A  wise  teacher 
will  overlook  many  things  and  I  am  convinced, 
after  many  years  of  experience  with  school 
discipline,  that  most  teachers  talk  too  much. 

"My  condition  from  my  ninth  to  my  thir- 
teenth year  was  due,  as  I  have  already  said, 
to  a  phase  of  abnormally  rapid  physical  devel- 
opment, but  this  had  practically  come  to  an 
end  at  the  time  of  mv  return  to  school  and  if 


102     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking-  of  a  Dullard 

I  had  been  handled  properly  my  mental  life 
might  have  been  awakened  at  that  time  and  I 
might  have  been  given  a  discipline  that  would 
have  saved  me  much  in  the  years  that  were  to 
follow.  Teachers,  however,  are  not  infallible 
and  mistakes  are  likely  to  occur  for  which 
they  should  not  be  blamed  too  severely. 

"On  my  return  to  work  on  the  farm,  the  re- 
alization grew^  upon  me  that  I  was  not  as  other 
boys.  They  had  brains  and  talents  which  I 
knew  I  did  not  possess.  I  could  plow  and 
mow  and  reap  and  sow,  but  I  could  not  imagine 
what  the  world  was  like  to  those  around  me 
who  were  smart  and  used  to  read  the  papers 
and  keep  track  of  the  march  of  events  in  the 
great  outer  world. 

"One  day,  when  I  was  about  fourteen  years 
old,  1  was  lying  on  a  bench  outside  the  dining 
room  window  resting  after  dinner,  when  my 
father  and  mother  and  my  uncle,  who  was  vis- 
iting us  for  the  first  time  within  mv  memory, 
entered  the  dining  room.  Without  intending 
to  eaves-drop  I  overheard  their  conversation. 
Mv  uncle  was  saving,  as  they  came  in:  'It's  a 


Into  the  Depths  103 

shame  that  you  don't  try  to  do  something  for 
poor  Ed,'  and  mother  replied:  'We  have  done 
everything"  that  we  conld  think  of  but  it  seems 
hopeless.  The  teachers  sent  him  home  from 
school  when  he  was  nine  years  old ;  they  said 
he  could  learn  nothing  but  vicious  habits  from 
the  bad  boys  who  attended  school.  We  sent 
him  back  to  school  last  year  and  the  teacher 
did  everything  in  her  power  to  help  him  but 
after  three  months  gave  it  up  as  useless.  If 
we  could  only  teach  him  reading  and  writing 
and  arithmetic  so  that  he  could  get  along  on 
the  farm,  we  would  be  satisfied.' 

"This  was  the  first  intimation  I  had  of  the 
reason  which  led  my  parents  to  keep  me  home 
from  school.  .Although  I  knew  in  a  general 
way  that  1  had  no  talents  such  as  other  boys 
possessed,  nevertheless,  my  mother's  words 
came  to  me  like  a  sentence  of  condemnation  and 
they  crushed  me  utterly.  1  slunk'  away  from 
the  bench  like  a  wounded  animal  and  hid  my- 
self in  the  corn  field. 

"During  the  two  years  that  followed  the 
gloom  and  despondency  that  settled  over  me 


tO4     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

were  deep  indeed.  I  used  to  look  at  the  work- 
men on  the  place  with  a  feeling  of  reverent 
wonder  for  they  had  brains  and  were  as  other 
people  and  I  could  no  more  imagine  what  the 
world  looked  like  to  their  eyes  than  I  can  now 
imagine  what  this  world  of  eager,  struggling 
humanity  must  be  like  to  the  angels. 

"I  made  no  attempt  to  read ;  I  forgot  the 
multiplication  table;  and  I  do  not  think  I  could 
have  written  my  own  name  when  I  was  sixteen 
years  old.  I  shrunk  more  than  ever  from  con- 
tact with  strangers ;  I  grew  silent  and  sullen. 
One  word  of  fault  finding  was  quite  sufficient 
to  throw  me  into  a  rage.  My  people  seemed 
to  understand  this  side  of  my  character  and 
avoided  everything  that  would  anger  me. 

"In  spite  of  my  sullenness  I  was  a  rather 
pious  boy  during  those  years.  There  was  no 
storm  severe  enough  to  keep  the  family  home 
from  church  on  Sunday.  \Ye  all  went  to  Con- 
fession and  Communion  once  a  month.  Xo 
matter  how  tired  I  might  have  been  1  do  not 
believe  that  I  ever  went  to  bed  without  saying 
my  night  prayers  and  my  rosary.  God  and  the 


Into  the  Depths  105 

Blessed  Virgin,  my  guardian  angel  and  the 
saints  were  as  real  to  me  as  the  people  who  sur- 
rounded me.  Whenever  I  particularly  wanted 
anything  I  dropped  on  my  knees  behind  the 
plow  or  in  the  wagon  box  and  asked  for  it  with 
far  more  confidence  of  being  heard  and  an- 
swered than  I  would  have  had  in  making  any 
request  from  my  earthly  parents. 

"Sometimes  I  used  to  dream  about  my  fu- 
ture. A  religious  vocation  occasionally  teased 
my  imagination.  Of  course  I  did  not  dream 
of  being  a  priest,  for  I  knew  that  a  priest  had 
to  have  brains  and  had  to  be  a  very  learned 
man  and  besides,  my  family  had  set  their  hearts 
on  my  little  brother's  becoming  a  priest.  He 
was  the  brightest  boy  in  school  and  used  to 
serve  Mass  on  Sundays  and  they  were  all  very 
proud  of  him. 

"T  had  heard  people  talk  ab'out  lay  brothers 
whose  duty  was  to  work  in  the  fields  and  to 
take  care  of  the  cattle,  and  I  imagined  that  I 
might  become  a  lav  brother.  Sometimes  I  used 
to  wonder  whether  I  would  be  a  farmer,  but 
I  found  it  impossible  to  complete  the  picture,  as 


io6     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

I  could  not  imagine  a  farmer  without  a  far- 
mer's wife  and  I  never  dared  to  hope  that  any 
girl  would  look  with  favor  upon  Studevan's 
omadhaun." 


CHAPTER  X 

The  Awakening 

"Jerome  K.  Jerome,  in  his  essay  on  'The 
Motherliness  of  Man/  said  the  Doctor,  "re- 
marks, 'to  talk  like  an  idiot  when  you  are  an 
idiot,  brings  no  discomfort;  to  behave  as  an 
idiot  when  yon  have  sense  enough  to  know  it, 
is  painful.'  My  mental  life  had  reached  its  low- 
est ebb  in  my  fourteenth  year,  and  prior  to  that 
time  my  condition  caused  me  but  little  discom- 
fort, probably  because  I  was  not  possessed  of 
enough  intelligence  to  realize  my  condition. 

"The  pain  began  with  my  awakening  intelli- 
gence in  the  beginning  of  my  fifteenth  year,  but 
many  long  years  dragged  by  their  leaden  feet 
before  I  understood  that  the  pain  was  a  har- 
binger of  salvation.  Those  around  me  had  as 
little  knowledge  of  my  awakening  mental  life 
as  they  had  of  the  pain  and  humiliation  that  I 
was  sui"ferin<T. 


loS     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

"My  repeated  failures  at  school  and  the  atti- 
tude of  those  around  me  produced  in  me  an 
abiding-  conviction  that  I  did  not  know  any- 
thing and  that  I  never  would  know  anything. 
The  struggle  between  this  conviction  and  my 
growing  mental  life  continued  to  my  twenty- 
first  year. 

"I  suppose  the  pathway  that  leads  up  out  of 
the  depths  is  always  painful.  I  have  no  inten- 
tion, however,  of  burdening  you  with  the  par- 
ticular trials  that  fell  to  my  lot  during  those 
six  years.  I  take  it  for  granted  that  you  are 
chiefly  interested  in  my  mental  awakening  and 
in  the  causes  which  produced  it.  I  retain  vivid 
memory  pictures  of  the  incidents  that  filled  out 
those  years,  probably  because  they  occurred  so 
late  in  life,  and  because  ->f  the  pain  which 
many  of  them  involved. 

"The  beneficent  role  of  pain  in  physical  life 
has  often  been  pointed  out.  It  keeps  the  child 
from  burning  his  fingers  a  second  time;  it 
drives  the  animal  to  seek  food  to  assuage  his 
hunger  and  drink  to  quench  his  thirst.  Pain 
warns  us  against  danger  and  compels  us  to 


The  Awakening-  109 

seek  remedies  for  many  of  the  ills  to  which 
flesh  is  heir. 

"All  this  is  just  as  true  of  mental  and  moral 
life  as  it  is  of  physical  life.  It  is  true  in  many 
senses  that  there  is  no  Easter  Sunday  without 
its  Good  Friday.  'Unless  the  grain  of  wheat 
falling  into  the  ground  perish,  it  remaineth 
alone;  but  if  it  perish,  it  b'ringeth  forth  much 
fruit.'  I  do  not  want  to  preach  a  sermon  on 
this  theme,  but  it  is  quite  necessary  to  the  sub- 
ject in  hand  that  we  have  some  realization  of 
the  role  which  pain  and  humiliation  played  in 
the  awakening  and  development  of  my  mental 
life. 

"As  I  have  said.  I  had  reached  my  present 
height  and  weight  when  I  was  fourteen  years 
old.  The  muscles  that  were  soft  in  the  days  of 
their  rapid  growth  soon  hardened  into  strength, 
and  in  the  exercise  of  this  strength  I  first  tasted 
the  joy  of  feeling  myself  equal,  at  least  in  one 
respect,  to  my  fellows.  Tom  Sawyer  touched 
some  of  the  deeper  springs  of  human  nature 
when  he  collected  toll  from  his  neighbors  for 


i  TO     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

granting  them  the  privilege  of  whitewashing 
his  fence. 

"It  was  no  little  thing  for  me,  who  felt  my- 
self inferior  in  every  other  respect  to  the  immi- 
grant laborers  on  my  father's  farm,  to  pass 
from  the  lighter  occupations  assigned  to  the 
boy  to  the  harder  work  of  the  man.  To  com- 
pete successfully  in  strength  and  endurance 
with  men  who  had  passed  the  golden  line  of 
twenty-one,  while  I  was  still  a  boy  of  fourteen, 
was  to  gain  some  little  measure  of  self-respect 
and  to  lay  the  foundation  of  self-reliance.  To 
be  able  to  chop  as  much  wood  in  a  day.  to  hoe 
as  man}'  rows  of  corn,  to  shock  as  many  acres 
of  grain  as  the  best  man  on  the  farm,  did  not 
at  the  time  appear  to  me  as  being  in  any  way 
connected  with  education,  but  it  did  give  me  a 
sense  of  satisfaction  that  more  than  o  mpen- 
sated  for  the  fatigue  entailed.  And  while  deep 
discouragement  and  the  sentence  of  condemna- 
tion pronounced  upon  my  mental  powers  barred 
every  other  gateway,  my  budding  conscious  life 
found  here  an  avenue  of  growth. 

''From  these  rude  employments  1   gradually 


The  Awakening  in 

progressed  to  others  which  called  for  some  lit- 
tle measure  of  skill,  such  as  plowing-  a  straight 
furrow,  b'uilding  a  load  of  hay,  or  pitching 
bundles  of  grain  to  the  top  of  a  high  stack. 
There  were  not  wanting  occupations  which  de- 
veloped rapidity  of  movement,  such  as  husking 
corn  or  binding  on  a  harvester.  And  while  I 
never  learned  to  be  precisely  a  'broncho-bus- 
ter/ I  delighted  in  feats  of  horsemanship  in 
which  I  acquired  no  mean  skill.  I  also  gradu- 
ally learned  to  use  the  simpler  carpenter  tools 
in  repairing  fences  and  barns  and  in  building 
outhouses.  We  repaired  our  own  farm  machin- 
ery and  I  was  frequently  called  upon  to  assist. 
My  eye  was  trained  to  reasonable  accuracy  of 
measurement;  I  could  tell  a  fourteen  or  a  six- 
teen foot  board  to  within  an  inch  of  its  length 
without  the  use  of  a  measure. 

''The  constant  variety  of  scene  and  of  occu- 
pation that  came  with  the  changing  seasons 
provided  me  with  the  best  possible  sensory  mo- 
tor training.  This  training  formed  the  basis 
of  all  my  subsequent  mental  development.  Of 
course  I  did  not  realize  the  value  of  these  things 


112     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

to  mental  life,  but  as  I  look  b'ack  upon  them 
now  I  know  that  they  were  my  salvation,  and 
that  had  it  not  been  for  them  I  would  probably 
never  have  come  up  out  of  the  darkness. 

"Xo  equal  period  in  my  school  life  has  left 
with  me  treasures  comparable  in  value  to  those 
left  by  those  years  on  the  farm  while  I  believed 
myself  banished  forever  from  school  and  books 
and  human  companionship.  Those  years  left 
with  me  a  sensory-motor  training'  of  a  high  or- 
der, a  robust  constitution,  an  enduring  love  of 
work,  self-reliance  and  a  determined  will." 

"From  the  way  you  tell  the  story.  Doctor,'" 
said  Professor  Shannon,  "one  would  be  led  to 
suppose  that  you  advocate  child-labor  instead 
of  play  grounds  and  the  axe  and  grubhoe  as 
substitutes  for  the  gymnasium  and  the  b'all 
field." 

"That  is  always  the  way  with  you.  Profes- 
sor, you  are  supposing  and  seeing  theories 
everywhere.  My  only  concern  was  to  give  you 
a  truthful  account  of  the  path  my  feet  took  in 
coming  up  out  of  the  gloom.  If  you  find  your 
theories  embodied  in  this,  I  shall  be  delighted; 


The  Awakening  113 

and  if  you  find  embodied  here  theories  that  dis- 
please you,  that  is  not  my  concern  at  present. 
Later,  if  opportunity  offers,  we  may  discuss 
educational  theories  in  the  light  of  the  facts  that 
I  am  narrating. 

"The  physical  development  which  I  have  re- 
ferred to  rather  than  described,  was  of  course 
not  directed  in  accordance  with  any  theory  or 
with  any  deliberate  view7  to  education.  It  was 
the  result  of  work,  not  of  play,  but  the  circum- 
stances surrounding  this  work  happened  to  be 
of  the  most  favorable  kind.  This  was  particu- 
larly true  for  a  boy  in  my  condition. 

"It  must  be  remembered  that  the  work  was 
not  that  of  a  factory;  it  kept  the  boy  out-of- 
door?  and  in  close  contact  with  nature,  and  it 
was  not  confined  to  any  one  occupation.  The 
deadening  effect  of  monotony  was  entirely  ab- 
sent :  all  the  senses  were  appealed  to  in  turn. 
The  smell  of  the  fresh  up-turned  soil,  the  per- 
fume of  the  wild  rose,  and  the  odor  of  the  ne\v- 
mo\vn  hay  are  still  with  me,  as  are  the  calls  of 
the  cat-b'ird.  the  whistle  of  the  bobolink,  the 
hummincf  of  the  bees  and  the  familiar  STICC- 


1 14     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

tacle  of  the  prairie  chicken  inviting  death  by 
shamming  a  broken  wing  in  order  to  divert 
attention  and  avert  clanger  from  her  young. 

"With  these  sights  and  sounds  of  nature  are 
inseparably  entwined  in  the  tangled  skein  of 
memory  the  outward  signs  of  a  human  activity 
that  blended  with  nature's  processes.  I  can  still 
feel  on  my  feet  the  soft,  wet  moss  of  the 
meadow  bottoms,  and  see  the  rhythm  of  the 
twenty  mowers,  and  hear  the  swish  of  the 
scythes  through  the  soft  grass,  and  the  music 
of  the  whetstones  on  the  steel  blades. 

"The  constant  change  of  work  that  charac- 
terized the  farm  labor  of  those  days  must  not 
be  put  on  a  level  with  the  unchanging  monot- 
ony that  characterizes  the  occupation  of  a  fac- 
tory hand.  Another  great  advantage  attaches 
to  the  sort  of  training  that  we  received  on  the 
farm;  the  work  is  not  done  for  the  sake  of 
the  training;  there  is  no  make-believe  about  it; 
it  is  animated  by  an  earnest  purpose;  some- 
thing real  is  being  done  every  hour. 

"The  absence  of  this  motive  is  one  of  the 
chief  drawbacks  to  all  artificial  systems  of 


The  Awakening  115 

training.  Exercise  that  is  taken  merely  for  the 
sake  of  the  training-  is  as  incapable  of  produc- 
ing the  highest  physical  development  as  is 
speaking  merely  for  practice  incapable  of  pro- 
ducing the  highest  type  of  eloquence,  or  as  is 
writing  for  the  sake  of  illustrating  principles 
of  rhetoric  incapable  of  producing  a  vigorous 
style.  It  is  true  that  for  young  children  the 
play  instinct  supplies  for  this  earnest  motive, 
but  there  is  nothing  that  develops  character  and 
self-reliance  in  youth  so  surely  as  real  occupa- 
tions and  real  responsibilities. 

"I  would  not  have  any  one  suppose  how- 
ever, that  I  advocate  subjecting  other  children 
to  such  experiences  as  those  I  passed  through 
at  that  time.  I  am  merely  trying  to  trace  the 
educative  value  of  the  experiences  as  they  oc- 
curred in  mv  own  case,  which,  as  every  one 
will  recognize,  is  far  from  being  typical.  Nor 
do  I  take  it  for  granted  that  the  experiences 
through  which  I  passed  were,  in  all  respects, 
the  best  for  my  own  development.  Had  I  been 
under  the  direction  of  some  one  who  under- 
stood my  case,  many  things  might  have  b'een 


1 1 6     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

accomplished  for  me,  and  many  mistakes,  from 
the  evil  effects  of  which  I  still  suffer,  might 
have  been  avoided." 

"It  is  easy  to  recognize  the  value  of  the 
physical  training  that  you  received  on  the 
farm,"  said  Miss  Ruth,  "and  I  am  beginning 
to  understand  where  you  get  your  power  of 
work ;  but  granting  all  that  you  claim  for  your 
sense  development  and  for  your  motor  train- 
ing, I  still  fail  to  understand  how  these  things 
could  have  led  you  back  to  school.  The  very 
joy  of  work  in  the  open  fields,  and  the  flowers 
and  the  songs  of  birds  would  all  seem  to  ren- 
der the  hated  school  still  more  hateful." 

"That  is  all  quite  true,"  replied  the  Doctor, 
"and  such  was  doubtless  the  first  effect  of  these 
things:  but  T  did  not  return  to  school  for  some 
years  and  there  were  several  intermediate 
phases  of  development  which  T  have  not  yet 
touched  upon.  If  you  will  bear  with  me  a 
while  I  shall  try  to  clear  up  the  difficulty. 

"The  abnormally  rapid  physical  growth  that 
preceded  my  fourteenth  year  was  followed,  as 
I  have  already  pointed  out,  by  a  period  of 


The  Awakening  117 

sensory-motor  development  in  which  there 
was  no  thought  of  books  or  of  formal  studies. 
In  the  beginning  of  this  stage  there  were  only 
faint  glimmerings  of  intelligence,  but  as  time 
went  on  these  grew  into  a  distinct  phase  of  in- 
tellectual development.  Of  course  there  were 
no  sharp  lines  of  demarcation  between  these 
several  phases ;  they  overlapped  and  shaded  off 
into  each  other  by  imperceptible  degrees.  The 
transition  from  one  of  these  phases  to  an- 
other will  perhaps  be  most  readily  understood 
by  following  the  development  along  certain 
definite  lines." 


CHAPTER  XI 

Development  of  the  Number  Concept 

"I  shall  begin  with  the  development  of  the 
number  concept.  At  fourteen  I  had  forgotten 
the  multiplication  table,  but  I  could  count;  and 
while  I  would  have  been  sadly  puzzled  if  asked 
to  add  six  and  nine,  I  could  have  found  the 
result  by  counting  on  my  fingers.  I  was  not 
in  the  habit  of  using  a  pencil  or  a  pen,  so 
I  did  not  realize  my  limitations  in  any  very 
painful  way. 

"We  used  to  raise  several  thousand  bushels 
of  grain  on  our  farm.  "When  I  was  a  boy  of 
nine  or  ten,  it  was  my  task  to  'hold  sacks'; 
that  is,  I  held  the  bag  while  my  father  emptied 
into  it  three  half-bushels  of  grain.  Each  time 
the  measure  was  emptied,  1  lifted  the  bag  so  as 
to  pack  down  the  grain  ;  in  this  way  I  learned 
through  the  sense  of  sight  and  through  the 
muscle  sense  the  size  and  weight  of  a  half 
bushel,  a  bushel,  and  a  bushel  and  a  half  of 


Development  of  the  Number  Concept     1 19 

grain.  This  experience  was  repeated  over  and 
over  again  thousands  of  times  eacli  year.  I  was 
also  in  the  habit  of  counting  the  sacks  as  we 
stood  them  up  against  each  other,  until  I  be- 
came able  to  recognize  with  a  fair  degree  of 
accuracy  when  there  were  in  the  pile,  twenty 
sacks,  the  number  that  made  a  load. 

"When  I  was  fifteen  years  old  J  was  one  of 
the  strongest  men  about  the  place,  and  I  was 
accordingly  assigned  the  task  of  hauling  in  the 
grain.  I  used  to  lift  the  b'ags  containing  a 
bushel  and  a  half  each  into  the  wagon-box,  and. 
when  I  arrived  at  the  granary  I  lifted  them  to 
mv  shoulder,  and  running  up  a  ladder  some  ten 
or  twelve  feet  high,  emptied  them  into  a  bin. 

"In  the  winter  season,  when  we  marketed 
the  grain,  it  was  my  task  to  tie  the  sacks,  each 
of  which  contained  something  over  two  bush- 
els, and  to  pile  ten  of  these  sacks  on  the  scales 
and  weigh  them.  I  knew  the  weights  and  could 
call  out  the  totals  for  ten  sacks,  which  usually 
ran  between  twelve  and  thirteen  hundred 
pound?.  Mv  brother  entered  these  weights  in 
his  book,  and  I  have  a  distinct  remembrance  of 


120     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking-  of  a  Dullard 

the  reverence  with  which  I  regarded  his  ability 
to  discover  from  these  weights  the  number  of 
bushels  and  the  number  of  pounds  in  each 
'batch.'  I  used  to  long  for  the  ability  to  work 
out  this  problem,  but  as  I  had  forgotten  my 
multiplication  table  and  had  forgotten  how  to 
do  a  sum  in  long  division,  it  baffled  me  for  a 
long  time. 

"Finally,  I  took  to  counting  up  the  weight  on 
my  lingers.  I  knew  that  sixty  pounds  consti- 
tuted one  bushel  of  wheat  and  then  as  I  count- 
ed on  my  fingers  seventy,  eighty,  ninety,  one 
hundred,  one  hundred  and  ten,  one  hundred  and 
twenty,  I  found  the  weight  of  two  bushels,  and 
thus  I  kept  on  counting  until  I  finally  reached 
the  weights  which  my  scales  recorded.  Each 
bushel  that  I  added  in  imagination  was  a  real 
bushel,  known  to  me  through  thousands  of  in- 
dividual muscular  efforts,  and  each  two  bush- 
els formed  a  new  unit  which  had  just  as  vivid 
an  abiding  place  in  my  sensile  memory.  But 
my  answers,  for  all  that,  were  always  wrong. 
I  went  back  over  the  process  and  counted  up 
again  and  again,  hundreds  of  times,  and  still 


Development  of  the  Number  Concept     121 

I  was  always  wrong.  Twelve  hundred  pounds 
would  spell  out  twenty  bushels,  and  twelve 
hundred  and  sixty  pounds  would  as  invariably 
divide  itself  up  into  twenty-one  bushels,  but 
my  brother  always  found  a  different  answer. 

"It  never  occurred  to  me  to  ask  any  one  for 
an  explanation,  and  prob'ably  if  I  had  asked  I 
would  have  been  put  off  with  a  smile;  for  I 
verily  believe  that  any  of  the  men  around  the 
place  would  have  been  heartily  ashamed  of  him- 
self had  he  been  caught  in  the  act  of  trying  to 
explain  a  sum  in  arithmetic  to  the  omadhaun. 
So  the  problem  continued  to  baffle  me  for  more 
than  a  year  until  I  overheard  my  brother  do- 
ing the  sum  out  loud  one  day,  and  thus  dis- 
covered that  he  subtracted  ten  pounds  for  sack 
weight.  This  was  my  first  discovery  in  Pure 
Science,  and  the  joy  that  it  brought  me  was 
in  no  way  diminished  by  my  failure  to  recog- 
nize that  it  was  the  beginning  of  an  intellectual 
development  that  would  one  day  lift  me  into 
companionship  with  the  learned. 

"In    the    years    that    followed    I    tied    and 
weighed   a    great   many   thousand    bushels    of 


122     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

wheat,  but  never,  I  think,  without  mentally  cal- 
culating the  bushels  and  pounds,,  and  the  proc- 
ess was  always  the  same,  although  I  soon 
learned  to  dispense  with  the  use  of  my  fingers 
in  counting  and  dealt  wholly  with  sense  im- 
ages ;  b\it  they  were  the  sense  images  of  real 
bushels  of  wheat  and  not  of  the  artificial  sym- 
bols on  which  children's  minds  are  sometimes 
fed. 


CHAPTER  XII 

The  Development  of  Spatial  Relationship 

"The  sense  imagery  that  formed  the  basis 
of   number   in   mv   mind    was   derived   chiefly 

./  J 

through  the  muscle  sense.  While  the  sense  of 
touch  and  the  sense  of  sight  each  contributed 
to  the  mental  images  of  the  various  measures 
o;~  wheat,  there  can  be  no  question  that  the 
chief  content  of  these  images  resulted  from  the 
constant  repetition  of  muscular  exertions.  It 
is.  perhaps,  \\orth  while  to  emphasize  this  fact. 
It  is  in  harmony  with  some  recent  theories  of 
mental  development,  and  it  is  in  entire  accord 
with  much  of  the  work  that  is  being  done  at 
present  for  the  reclamation  of  the  dullard.  It 
is  hardly  necessary  to  add  that  while  this  was 
the  foundation  of  the  number  concept  in  my 
mental  development,  it  was  not  the  only  series 
of  experiences  that  contributed  to  the  growth 
and  development  of  this  side  of  my  mind. 

"During-  the  summers  between  mv  tenth  and 


124     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking-  of  a  Dullard 

fourteenth  years  I  helped  to  build  several  miles 
of  board  fence  around  our  farm  to  replace  the 
original  rail  fences  that  were  falling  into  de- 
cay. In  this  way  I  learned  to  use  the  square 
and  the  hand-saw,  and  I  made  the  close  ac- 
quaintance of  boards  six  inches  wide  and  four- 
teen or  sixteen  feet  long.  The  posts  were  not 
always  placed  accurately  and  so  we  were  at 
times  obliged  to  select  boards  that  were  either 
a  little  longer  or  a  little  shorter  than  the  stand- 
ard lengths.  My  eye  was  thus  gradually 
trained  to  judge  with  considerable  accuracy 
small  variations  in  the  lengths  of  the  boards. 
During  these  years  I  was  also  frequently  de- 
tailed to  help  the  carpenters  with  the  rougher 
work  in  building  barns  and  out-houses,  an  oc- 
cupation that  taught  me  the  use  of  the  simpler 
carpenter  tools  and  familiarized  me  with  vari- 
ous lengths  raid  dimensions. 

"\Yhen  I  was  about  fifteen  years  old  we 
hauled  two  or  three  car-loads  of  lumber  from 
a  siding  a  few  miles  from  the  farm  to  build  a 
barn.  I  drove  one  of  the  teams  and  helped  to 
load  and  unload  the  lumber.  One  dav  we  load- 


Development  of  Spatial  Relationship      125 

ed  some  green  sills  onto  my  wagon.  Before 
the  load  had  attained  its  usual  size  my  brother 
remarked  that  I  had  eight  hundred  feet  on, 
which,  owing  to  the  bad  condition  of  the 
roads,  he  said,  was  quite  enough  for  my  team. 
I  knew  that  the  load  was  heavy  enough  for 
my  team,  but  his  remark  that  there  were  eight 
hundred  feet  of  lumber  on  my  wagon  puzzled 
me  sadly. 

"At  this  time  I  could  measure  off  a  foot  with 
my  eye  with  great  accuracy,  and  I  had  just  as 
accurate  an  idea  of  what  constituted  a  square 
foot,  but,  in  my  mind,  neither  of  these  things 
had  anything  to  do  with  solids.  I  had  fre- 
quently marked  off  a  corn  field  into  square 
yards  and  counted  up  the  yards.  I  had  often 
counted  up  the  square  feet  of  floor  space  in  a 
bin  or  stall.  But  the  cubic  foot  was  my  unit 
of  measure  for  all  solids.  I  was  familiar  with 
this  cube  in  putting  up  ice  and  in  measuring- 
cord  wood.  I  had  no  suspicion  that  the  volume 
of  a  foot  of  lumber  differed  in  any  way  from 
that  of  a  foot  of  cord  wood.  I  had  hauled  many 
a  curd  of  wood  and  I  knew  its  dimensions,  eight 


126     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

feet  long,  four  feet  wide,  and  four  feet  high, 
and  I  had  frequently  counted  up  the  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty-eight  feet  which  it  contained. 
But  this  load  of  lumber,  which  to  my  eye  did 
not  seem  much  more  than  half  as  large  as  a 
cord  of  wood,  contained,  according  to  my  broth- 
er's statement,  eight  hundred  feet. 

"I  gave  expression  to  my  surprise,  but  my 
brother  only  repeated  that  there  were  eight 
hundred  and  sixty-four  feet  on  the  load.  I  puz- 
zled over  this  all  the  way  home.  While  I  rest- 
ed my  team  at  the  foot  of  a  long  hill.  I  went 
over  the  load  carefully.  It  was  one  foot  deep, 
three  feet  wide,  and  twenty-four  feet  long.  I 
could  not  multiply  these  dimensions,  of  course, 
but  I  could  measure  off  the  blocks  with  my 
eye  and  count  them  up.  As  I  went  back  over 
the  load  from  side  to  side,  marking  off  the 
square  feet  with  my  linger,  I  found  that  I  had 
only  seventy-two  feet  instead  of  the  eight  hun- 
dred and  sixty-four  feet  of  which  my  brother 
spoke. 

"It  was  a  clear  case  of  conflict  between  evi- 
dence and  authority,  and.  as  usual,  authority 


Development  of  Spatial  Relationship      127 

had  the  best  of  it.  My  b'rother  was  to  me  an 
oracle  on  all  matters,  and  I  knew  that  he  must 
be  right  whatever  came  of  the  evidence  of  my 
senses.  But  the  problem  stuck  in  my  mind  and 
teased  me  and  I  could  not  get  rid  of  it.  That 
evening-  at  supper  I  mentioned  the  matter  again 
to  my  brother.  I  told  him  that  I  had  meas- 
ured that  load  of  lumber  and  that  there  were 
only  seventy-two  feet  in  it  instead  of  eight 
hundred  and  sixty-four.  He  smiled  his  usual 
pitying  smile  that  I  remember  so  well.  He 
doubtless  considered  my  remark  another  proof 
of  my  hopeless  idiocy. 

"The  matter  did  not  rest  here,  however.  I 
had  very  few  things  to  think  about  in  those 
days  and  that  puzzle  kept  rattling  about  in  my 
mind,  teasing  me.  Every  time  I  handled  lum- 
ber I  counted  up  the  feet,  and  when  I  could  get 
any  one  to  measure  the  lumber  for  me  and  tell 
me  how  many  feet  there  really  were,  I  was 
confronted  with  the  same  old  baffling  contra- 
diction. They  all  confirmed  my  brother's  state- 
ment and  contradicted  the  tangible  evidence  of 
mv  senses. 


128     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

"It  never  once  occurred  to  me  to  question 
the  accuracy  of  my  idea  of  what  constituted  a 
foot  of  lumber,  and  those  around  me  either 
failed  to  understand  the  nature  of  my  difficulty 
or  simply  brushed  it  aside  as  one  more  of  the 
omadhaun's  vagaries,  which  it  would  have  been 
worse  than  folly  to  seek  to  understand." 

"Pardon  me  for  interrupting  you.  Doctor/' 
said  Miss  Russell,  "but  isn't  that  the  reason  why 
so  many  people  are  unable  to  help  the  children? 
The  same  words  mean  different  things  to  the 
teacher  and  to  the  pupil,  and  they  are  constant- 
ly misunderstanding  each  other." 

"Yes.  that  is  precisely  it.  Miss  Russell,  and  if 
the  truth  were  known,  many  a  dullard  was 
made  in  this  way.  But  at  present  the  tendency 
is  decidedly  in  the  right  direction.  The  teach- 
er usually  recognizes  the  folly  of  attempting  to 
explain  anything  to  a  child  until  she  herself 
has  first  learned  to  sec  it  through  his  eyes.  If 
she  can  comprehend  his  difficulty,  it  is  an  easy 
matter  to  remove  it. 

"But  to  return  to  my  story.  I  have  often  said 
that  I  had  no  teacher  to  help  me  up  out  of  the 


Development  of  Spatial  Relationship      129 

darkness.  This  statement  needs  some  modifi- 
cation. I  had  two  brothers,  Joe,  ten  years 
older  than  myself,  and  Bernard  twelve,  each 
of  whom,  without  intending  it.  perhaps,  per- 
formed for  me  some  of  the  functions  of  a 
teacher.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  two  men 
who,  in  their  mental  life,  offered  a  more  com- 
plete contrast  to  each  other. 

''Joe  was  a  calm,  decisive,  impertubable  man  ; 
he  was  an  omniverons  reader;  he  was  boss  on 
the  farm  at  the  time  of  which  I  speak,  and  his 
orders  were  final  and  his  decisions  irrevoca- 
ble. Joe  dealt  only  in  conclusions ;  his  proc- 
esses of  reasoning  and  his  data  were  all  re- 
served for  his  own  exclusive  use. 

''Bernard,  on  the  contrary,  was  a  mechanical 
genius,  and  while  he  had  a  fair  education  and 
v\as  fond  of  reading,  his  mental  life  was  built 
up  largely  of  his  own  experiences.  He  was 
never  content  with  assertions ;  he  had  to  see 
things.  Tf  you  differed  from  him,  he  preced- 
ed at  once  to  find  out  the  reasons  for  the  dif- 
ference. "With  him  there  were  twenty  correct 
ways  of  doing  everything,  instead  of_one,  and 


130     The  Making-  and  the  Unmaking-  of  a  Dullard 

it  was  only  a  question  of  choosing-  which  of 
the  twenty  ways  was  the  best. 

"I  need  not  add  that  the  brother  that  I  have 
referred  to  in  both  the  wheat  and  the  lumb'er 
incidents  was  Joe.  Bernard  was  married  at 
the  time  and  lived  on  a  farm  of  his  own  ad- 
joining" ours,  and  while  we  frequently  worked 
together,  I  was  in  much  less  direct  and  frequent 
contact  with  him  than  I  was  with  Joe. 

"One  day  about  a  year  after  the  incident  of 
the  load  of  lumber  to  which  I  have  just  re- 
ferred I  was  helping  Bernard  put  a  roof  on 
a  barn.  We  ran  short  of  sheeting  lumber,  and 
as  Joe  was  just  leaving  for  town,  Bernard  called 
down  to  him  to  bring'  home  two  hundred  feet 
of  it.  I  had  noticed  the  shortage  and  had 
counted  up  the  amount  of  lumber  that  would 
be  needed,  so  I  protested  that  seventeen  feet, 
not  two  hundred,  was  all  that  would  be  re- 
quired. 

"Bernard  asked  me  how  I  made  that  out. 
The  unfinished  strip  of  roof  was  seventeen  feet 
long  and  twelve  feet  wide,  so  the  problem  was 
finite  easy.  I  called  Bernard's  attention  to  the 


Development  of  Spatial  Relationship      131 

fact  that  seventeen  boards  one  foot  wide  and 
twelve  feet  long,  each  of  which  contained,  ac- 
cording- to  my  count,  but  one  foot  of  lumber, 
would  just  finish  the  roof.  Bernard  asked  me 
what  I  meant  by  saying  that  there  was  only 
one  foot  of  lumber  in  each  of  the  boards,  and 
when  I  explained  the  matter  to  him,  he  said  that 
I  was  thinking  of  a  cubic  foot  and  that  a  foot 
of  lumber  was  only  one  inch  deep.  At  last  I 
had  the  solution  of  my  problem. 

"From  this  time  forward  the  foot  wide 
board  became  my  standard  of  measurement.  In 
imagination  I  saw  it  cut  up  into  as  many  actual 
feet  of  lumber  as  the  board  contained.  Fenc- 
ing lumber  presented  no  difficulty.  These  boards 
were  all  six  inches  wide,  and  by  placing  two 
of  them  side  by  side  they  were  readily  convert- 
ed into  boards  a  foot  wide. 

"The  two  b'y  six  dimension  lumber  was 
scarcely  more  difficult  than  the  fencing  lumber. 
I  imagined  each  of  these  timbers  split  into  two 
fence  boards,  and.  these  placed  side  by  side 
formed  a  one  foot  board.  The  six  by  six's  were 
all  first  converted  into  two  by  six's.  I  spent 


132     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

some  weeks,  while  plowing  or  working  in  the 
fields,  calculating  the  amount  of  lumber  in  ev- 
ery fence  about  the  farm.  But  when  I  attempt- 
ed to  count  up  the  amount  of  lumber  in  a  barn, 
I  soon  struck  a  snag.  In  the  barn  there  were 
numbers  of  two  by  four  studding  and  two  by 
four  rafters  and  two  by  eight  joists,  and,  at 
times,  eight  by  eight  sills.  I  could  do  nothing 
with  any  of  these  dimensions. 

"I  split  the  two  by  four's  in  imagination  as 
I  had  the  two  by  six's,  but  the  two  four-inch 
strips  placed  side  by  side  measured  only  eight 
inches.  They  were  too  wide  to  be  dealt  with  as 
fence  boards  and  too  narrow  to  be  classed  with 
the  one  foot  boards.  I  split  two  of  these  scant- 
lings in  imagination  and  placed  the  four  strips 
side  by  side ;  but  they  measured  sixteen  inches, 
and  so  the  difficulty  remained,  and  for  a  time 
it  seemed  hopeless. 

"Had  I  actually  split  the  scantlings  instead 
of  doing  so  in  imagination  only,  I  would  prob- 
ably have  discovered  that  three  of  the  four  inch 
strips  would  make  a  board  a  foot  wide.  But 
as  the  case  stood,  it  was  some  months  before  I 


Development  of  Spatial  Relationship      133 

realized  that  by  splitting  three  of  the  two  by 
four's  and  placing  the  six  resulting  strips  side 
by  side,  I  could  convert  them  into  two  one  foot 
boards. 

"After  this,  all  difficulty  in  calculating  the 
quantity  of  lumber  rapidly  disappeared.  The 
four  by  four's,  the  two  by  eight's,  and  the 
eight  by  eight's  were  readily  resolved  into  foot 
boards  in  the  same  manner  as  the  two  by  four's. 
The  ten  inch  wide  material  still  presented  some 
difficulty,  but  .1  soon  hit  upon  the  device  of 
ripping  off  two  inches  of  these  timbers  and  put- 
ting the  pieces  together  so  as  to  make  four 
inch  or  eight  inch  stuff.  Sometimes  I  cut  a 
two  inch  strip,  in  imagination,  off  a  two  by 
eight  and  added  it  to  a  two  by  four,  thus  con- 
verting the  two  pieces  into  two  two  by  six's. 
Sometimes  I  converted  in  the  same  way  three 
two  by  eight's  into  four  two  by  six's. 

"At  that  time  I  did  not  know  the  meaning 
of  angle  or  triangle;  I  think  I  had  not  even 
heard  the  word  geometry,  and,  as  I  have  said 
before,  I  did  not  know  the  multiplication  table. 
It  would  probably  have  been  necessary  for  me 


134     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

to  resort  to  counting  in  order  to  add  such  large 
numbers  as  seven  and  nine ;  but  I  was  solving 
many  practical  problems  in  plane  and  solid 
geometry,  nevertheless,  and  the  fever  of  in- 
vestigation had  taken  a  deep  hold  of  me. 

"The  areas  of  irregular  corners  were  yet  to 
b'e  calculated,  and  I  resorted  to  various  devices 
to  reduce  these  corners  to  some  regular  shape 
that  I  could  deal  with.  The  sheeting  of  the 
gable  ends  of  buildings  compelled  me  to  deal 
with  triangles,  although  I  am  not  aware  that 
I  used  the  term.  I  soon  learned  that  in  fitting 
a  piece  of  board  into  the  angle  of  the  gable, 
there  were  two  triangular  pieces  cut  off  which, 
if  put  together  on  their  square  edges,  would 
just  cover  the  same  space. 

"From  this  T  soon  learned  that  if  I  calculated 
every  board  on  one  gable  as  having  the  same 
length  as  the  longest  board,  there  would  be 
enough  lumber  to  cover  two  gables.  Years  af- 
terward I  learned  that  the  scientific  way  of  stat- 
ing this  simple  truth  is:  the  area  of  a  triangle 
is  equal  to  one  half  of  the  base  into  the  altitude. 
Again,  we  usually  nailed  the  jack-rafters  to  the 


Development  of  Spatial  Relationship      135 

middle  of  the  rafters,  and  they  were  always  lev- 
el. Of  course,  I  afterward  learned  that  the 
right  way  to  state  this  is:  a  line  dividing  two 
sides  of  a  triangle  proportionally  is  parallel 
to  the  base." 

"So  yon  were  really  trained  in  the  Speer 
method."  said  Miss  Ruth. 

"Yes,  in  a  measure,  I  was,  although  the 
Speer  block  method  was  not  developed  until 
many  years  after  the  time  of  which  I  speak, 
and  I  had  no  more  thought  of  educating  myself 
by  all  this  day-dreaming,  as  it  seemed  to  me, 
than  those  around  me  had  that  I  was  b'eing  edu- 
cated. My  mind  was  simply  growing  and  hun- 
gry. Having  been  thoroughly  discouraged  in 
every  oilier  direction,  it  grew  along  these  lines, 
and  rejoiced  in  its  activity  without  even  sus- 
pecting that  it  was  growing. 

"There  are  some  obvious  resemblances  be- 
tween the  haphazard  training  that  I  received 
and  the  systematic  training  that  children  now 
receive  in  those  schools  that  use  the  Speer 
blocks  ;  but  there  are  also  many  important  points 
of  difference  to  be  noted.  The  work  with  the 


136     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

blocks  is  systematic  and  the  child  gains  as  much, 
in  some  ways  at  least,  in  a  month  as  I  gained 
in  years. 

"But,  on  the  other  hand,  every  little  bit  of 
truth  that  the  growing  mind  discovers  for  itself 
has  more  real  value  than  many  times  the  quan- 
tity if  fed  to  it.  There  is  a  development  of 
self-reliance  and  originality  in  discovery  that 
is  seldom  attained  in  systematic  instruction. 
Then,  too,  I  made  my  own  blocks  and  was  com- 
pelled at  a  very  early  date  to  use  imaginary 
ones. 

"These  memory  pictures  played  a  much 
larger  role  in  my  case  than  they  do  in  the  sys- 
tematic training  that  is  usually  given  in  the 
schools  where  the  children  deal  with  actual 
blocks  of  all  sizes  and  shapes.  This  fact  is 
probably  responsible  for  the  power  of  con- 
structive imagination  which  I  formerly  regard- 
ed as  one  of  my  best  natural  gifts,  but  which  I 
have  since  come  to  believe  was  largely,  if  not 
wholly,  due  to  the  training  of  which  I  have 
just  been  speaking.  I  shall  have  occasion  to 
return  to  this  theme  bye  and  bye;  but  there  are 


Development  of  Spatial  Relationship      137 

a  few  other  lines  of  development  that  belong  to 
this  period  which  I  think  it  better  to  consider 
first." 


CHAPTER  XIII 

Contact  With  Nature 

"A  third  line  of  development,  closely  related 
in  many  ways  to  the  two  that  I  have  just  out- 
lined, but  much  more  complex  in  character, 
finally  brought  me  up  out  of  the  gloom  and 
made  me  realize  that  at  least  in  some  things  re- 
quiring brains  I  could  succeed  as  well  as  others. 

"At  present,  the  Minnesota  River  meanders 
between  narrow  banks  in  a  marshy  bottom  for 
some  twenty  miles  before  it  is  joined  b'y  the 
Mississippi.  It's  low  banks  are  covered  with 
fine  old  lindens  and  stately  elms  interspersed 
with  occasional  clusters  of  cottomvood  and 
willow.  The  wild  grape  grows  here  in  great 
profusion.  Here  and  there  it  strangles  a  young 
sapling  and  converts  it  into  a  trellis.  The 
more  ambitious  vines  reach  up  and  festoon  the 
lofty  arches  formed  by  the  branches  of  the 
linden  and  the  elm.  The  wild  plum,  the  su- 
mac, and  the  hazel  bush  form  a  thickly  tangled 


Contact  with  Nature  139 

mass  wherever  the  tall  trees  permit  sufficient 
light  to  enter. 

"In  past  ages,  here  flowed  a  majestic  river 
more  than  four  miles  wide,  which,  in  the 
course  of  time,  cut  its  way  through  some  forty 
feet  of  limestone  and  more  than  one  hundred 
feet  of  underlying  soft  white  sandstone.  The 
Mississippi  emptied  into  the  Minnesota  at  the 
head  of  this  broad  valley  until  a  terminal  mo- 
raine formed  by  the  ancient  glacier  diverted  its 
course  into  a  new  bed  and  caused  it  to  plunge 
over  a  high  precipice  at  the  present  point  of 
junction.  After  this,  the  current  of  the  Min- 
nesota became  very  slow,  and  the  accumulat- 
ing sediment  gradually  confined  the  channel 
to  its  present  course,  leaving  the  remainder  of 
the  original  river  bottom  covered  by  a  shallow 
lake. 

"As  time  went  on,  water  lilies,  bullrushes, 
wild  rice,  and  weeds  of  various  kinds  choked 
up  the  greater  part  of  the  lake.  Each  year 
the  melting  snows  and  the  spring  rains  caused 
the  river  to  overflow"  its  banks  and  to  spread  a 
lave;'  of  mud  over  the  whole  extent  of  the 


140     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking-  of  a  Dullard 

ancient  river  bottom,  which,  with  the  decaying 
vegetation,  formed  successive  layers  of  peat. 
"This  peat  marsh  is  at  present  covered  with 
moss  and  with  luxuriant  growths  of  blue-joint, 
red-top,  vetch,  and  various  wild  grasses.  In- 
numerable springs  of  clear,  cold  water  bubble 
up  through  the  peat  from  the  underlying  sand- 
stone and  wend  their  way  to  the  open  lake  in 
little  streams  that  gurgle  and  murmur  between 
over-hanging  mossv  banks,  sometimes  linger- 

o        o  ^  o 

ing  in  the  open  sunshine,  where  they  are  filled 
with  watercress,  and  again  tumbling  over  some 
slight  obstruction  in  mimic  waterfalls,  or  hid- 
ing for  a  time  beneath  the  peat.  The  tiger- 
lily,  the  iris,  and  the  wild  morning  glory  are 
everywhere  in  evidence. 

''Kadi  year,  with  the  spring  floods,  multi- 
tudes of  fish,  coming  up  the  river  to  cast  their 
spawn,  pass  into  the  lake,  where  they  are  left 
imprisoned  by  the  rapidly  subsiding  waters.  In 
the  tall  reeds  that  still  fringe  the  lake  the  sum- 
mer breezes  have  rocked  the  nests  of  innumer- 
able generations  of  red-winged  blackbirds. 
Here,  too,  is  the  home  of  the  meadow-lark, 


Contact  with  Nature  141 

the  snipe,  and  the  crane,  of  the  wild  duck  and 
the  loon.  This  meadow  is  the  paradise  of 
snails  and  frogs.  Here  the  bumble  bee  finds 
immunity  from  the  depredations  of  the  field- 
mouse  and  may  lay  up  his  secure  store  of 
honey  in  each  high  tuft  of  moss.  Here  is  the 
breeding  place  of  the  mosquito  and  the  feed- 
ing ground  of  the  dragon  fly. 

"Here  in  this  world  of  beauty  and  of  teem- 
ing life,  the  Julys  of  all  my  boyhood  summers 
were  spent  in  working  with  the  haying  crew. 
Here  I  gradually  grew  into  a  knowledge  of 
many  of  nature's  processes  and  into  sympathy 
with  many  of  her  moods.  With  no  teacher 
but  nature  herself,  I  was  made  a  daily  witness 
of  the  many-sided  struggle  for  existence  going 
on  about  me,  and  the  germ  of  many  a  natural 
truth,  destined  to  grow  and  bear  fruit  in  after 
years,  found  lodgment  in  my  mind.  Mean- 
while, my  mental  life  was  being  lifted  into  a 
new  phase  of  development  through  the  expen- 
diture of  my  muscular  energy. 

"These  meadow  bottoms  are  too  soft  to  per- 
mit of  the  use  of  horses  or  of  machinery.  All 


142     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

the  hay  is  cut  with  scythes  and  gathered  up  into 
cocks  with  pitchforks.  Forty  or  fifty  of  these 
cocks  are  then  carried  on  poles  and  built  into 
a  stack,  in  which  the  hay  remains  until  the 
frosts  of  winter  make  it  possible  for  the  teams 
to  approach." 


CHAPTER  XIV 
Germinal  Truths 

''A  large  part  of  mechanics  naturally  grows 
out  of  a  knowledge  of  the  lever.  And,  during 
the  haying  season  each  year,  the  constant  use 
of  the  hay-pole  and  pitchfork  gave  me  a  thor- 
ough knowledge  of  the  lever." 

"I  hope  you  won't  think  me  stupid,"  said 
Miss  Russell,  "but  I  don't  see  how  you  learned 
mechanics  through  the  use  of  a  pitchfork.  I 
have  no  talent  for  physics  and  I  had  the  hard- 
est time  to  get  a  pass-mark  in  the  suh'ject  when 
I  was  going  through  the  high  school;  but  if 
physics  can  be  learned  by  the  use  of  such  sim- 
ple instruments  as  a  pitchfork  and  a  hay-pole, 
there  may  still  be  some  hope  for  me.  Won't 
you  please  explain  how  you  did  it?" 

"I  shall  be  delighted  to  do  so,  Miss  Russell; 
however,  I  must  first  protest  that  you  do  your- 
self great  injustice  when  you  say  you  have  no 
talent  for  physics.  From  what  I  saw  of  your 


144     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

work  in  the  Lee  School  the  other  day,  I  am 
convinced  that  there  is  no  subject  in  the  curri- 
culum for  which  you  have  not  splendid  talent. 
No,  I  am  not  complimenting,  I  mean  just  what 
I  say.  The  teacher,  in  my  opinion,  is  always 
to  blame  for  the.  want  of  these  special  talents 
in  the  pupil,  of  which  we  so  often  hear. 

"When  we  begin  to  teach  mechanics  with 
deductions  from  abstract  principles,  we  are 
simply  reversing  the  natural  order  of  the 
mind's  growth.  We  should  be  quite  correct 
were  we  to  define  a  machine  as  a  transformer 
of  energy,  and  we  might  enter  into  an  elabor- 
ate explanation  of  the  meaning  of  such  terms 
as  oic/'gv  and  transformation.  When  we  had 
finished,  the  pupils  who  had  listened  to  us 
might  think  that  they  understood  what  a  ma- 
chine was,  but  their  knowledge  would  be  sterile. 

"From  Aristotle's  day  down  to  modern  times 
philosophers  have  busied  themselves  with  elab- 
orating theories  concerning  the  nature  of  mat- 
ter, and  the}-  doubtless  believed  themselves  to 
be  possessed  of  much  profound  knowledge  of 
the  subject;  but,  however  correct  their  theories 


Germinal  Truths  145 

may  have  been,  it  is  well  for  us  to  remember 
that  such  theories  have  never  yet  led  to  prac- 
tical results.  Modern  sciences  and  modem  in- 
ventions have  all  grown  out  of  actual  contact 
with  nature  and  not  out  of  the  speculations  of 
philosophers. 

"This,  however,  does  not  justify  the  abuse 
of  the  inductive  method  which  is  so  frequently 
to  be  found  in  our  modern  schools.  When  our 
enthusiasm  for  the  inductive  method  leads 
us  to  overwhelm  our  pupils  with  a  multi- 
tude of  details  before  they  have  obtained 
a  general  view  of  the  subject,  the  usual  result 
is  an  uncoordinated  mass  of  facts,  from  which 
the  pupils  are  unable  to  extract  the  great  fun- 
damental truths ;  and  without  these  truths 
there  can  b'e  little  real  progress  to\vard  the 
mastery  of  any  science. 

"Were  we  to  take  our  pupils  into  a  supply 
store  and  show  them  an  endless  variety  of 
valves,  wheels,  and  levers,  they  would  be  little 
better  off,  as  far  as  a  knowledge  of  mechanics 
is  concerned,  than  if  their  minds  had  been  fed 
on  definitions  and  formulae.  They  would  be 


146     The  Making-  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

just  as  bewildered  in  the  one  case  as  in  the 
other,  when  brought  face  to  face  with  a  set  of 
complex  machines  in  actual  operation. 

"To  obtain  satisfactory  results  in  the  teach- 
ing of  any  subject  we  should  begin  with  ger- 
minal truths  which  contain  the  whole  body  of 
knowledge  in  somewhat  the  same  manner  as 
seeds  contain  fully  developed  plants." 

"Pardon  me,  Doctor,"  said  the  Judge,  "I  am 
afraid  I  do  not  quite  follow  you.  Did  I  not 
understand  you  to  say  a  while  ago  that  when 
we  begin  to  teach  mechanics  by  putting  before 
the  pupils  a  set  of  deductions  from  abstract 
principles,  we  are  reversing  the  natural  order 
of  the  mind's  growth  ?  And  now  you  tell  us 
that  to  obtain  satisfactory  results  in  the  teach- 
ing of  any  subject  we  should  begin  with  ger- 
minal truths  which  contain  the  whole  body  of 
knowledge  in  somewhat  the  same  manner  as 
that  in  which  seeds  contain  fully  developed 
plants.  Is  not  this  tantamount  to  saying  that 
to  obtain  satisfactory  results  we  must  reverse 
the  natural  order  of  the  mind's  growth?  Let 
me  state  my  objection  in  form  as  we  used  to 


Germinal  Truths  147 

do  in  the  good  old  days  when  we  were  study- 
ing philosophy  under  Father  Gherardo. 

"To  begin  the  teaching  of  any  subject  with 
abstract  principles  is  to  reverse  the  order  of 
the  mind's  growth.  But  germinal  truths,  which 
contain  the  whole  body  of  knowledge  after  the 
manner  in  which  seeds  contain  fully  developed 
plants,  are  abstract  principles.  Therefore,  to 
begin  the  teaching  of  any  subject  with  ger- 
minal truths  is  to  reverse  the  natural  order 
of  the  mind's  growth,  quod  absurd-urn  est. 

"Or  it  may  seem  preferable  to  state  my  ob- 
jection in  positive  form,  thus:  To  obtain  sat- 
isfactory results  in  the  teaching  of  any  subject 
we  should  begin  with  germinal  truths  which 
contain  the  whole  body  of  knowledge  to  be 
imparted  after  the  manner  in  which  seeds  con- 
tain fully  developed  plants.  But  such  germinal 
truths  are  abstract  principles.  Therefore,  to 
obtain  satisfactory  results  in  the  teaching  of 
any  subject  we  should  begin  with  abstract  prin- 
ciples." 

"A  hit!  a  palpable  hit!"  cried  the  Professor. 

"T  am  afraid,"  said  the  Doctor,  "that  I  shall 


148     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

have  to  polish  up  my  armor  before  entering  the 
lists  against  so  redoubtable  a  champion.  But 
if  the  Judge  will  consent  I  think  it  will  not  be 
difficult  for  us  to  settle  our  contention  at  the 
bar  of  modern  pedagogy. 

"In  this  objection  it  is  taken  for  granted 
that  a  germinal  truth  is  the  same  thing  as  an 
abstract  principle,  whereas  I.  whether  justified 
or  not.  have  used  the  terms  to  designate  things 
that  are  separated  by  polar  distances.  An  ab- 
stract principle  presupposes  a  fully  developed 
knowledge  of  the  concrete  from  which  it  is  an 
abstraction. 

"The  Greek  philosopher,  looking  back  upon 
a  rich  mental  possession,  abstracted  the  central 
thought.  It  is  the  terminal  stage  of  a  long 
series  of  mental  processes,  whereas  a  germinal 
truth  is  the  initial  stage  and  it  leads  gradually 
to  the  full  development  of  the  concrete.  The 
germinal  truth  is  in  a  sense  rudimentary  while 
the  abstract  principle  is  vestigial.  They  re- 
semble each  other  from  the  standpoint  of  quan- 
tity:  they  are  both  diminutive:  they  both  con- 


Germinal  Truths  149 

tain    the   central    thought   and   they    are   both 
equally  sparing  of  details. 

"The  point  of  departure  in  our  Lord's  teach- 
ing is  always  a  germinal  truth ;  whereas  the 
Greek  philosopher  usually  set  out  from  an  ab- 
stract principle.  The  Greek  talked  to  the  high- 
ly developed  intellect.  Christ  spoke  to  little 
children  as  well  as  to  philosophers.  And  He 
warned  His  followers  that  if  they  would  un- 
derstand His  teaching,  they  must  empty  their 
minds  of  human  traditions  and  of  preconceived 
ideas  and  become  as  little  children.  'Unless 
you  become  as  one  of  these,  you  cannot  enter 
the  kingdom  of  heaven.' 


CHAPTER  XV 

The  Germinal  Concept  in  Mechanics 

"To  begin  the  teaching  of  mechanics  with 
the  definition  of  a  machine  as  a  transformer  of 
energy  is  a  very  different  thing  from  beginning 
the  study  of  the  same  subject  in  its  concrete, 
germinal  form,  the  lever.  Young  children,  in 
playing  with  a  see-saw,  come  to  understand 
the  meaning  of  the  lever  of  equal  and  of  un- 
equal arms  long  before  their  minds  are  suffi- 
ciently developed  to  grasp  the  meaning  of  ab- 
stract definitions  and  mathematical  formulae. 
They  understand  that  a  downward  pressure  on 
one  arm  of  the  lever  is  changed  into  an  up- 
ward pressure  on  the  other  arm,  and  it  does 
not  take  them  long  to  discover  that  a  child 
sitting  out  on  one  end  of  the  see-saw  will  bal- 
ance two  or  more  children  seated  near  the 
fulcrum  on  the  other  end.  They  understand, 
too.  that  the  longer  the  arm.  the  larger  the 
movement. 


The  Germinal  Concept  in  Mechanics      151 

"In  this  way  there  is  laid  up  in  the  minds  of 
the  children  a  secure  foundation  for  the  future 
study  of  the  science  of  physics,  since  mechan- 
ics is  the  key  to  physics  and  a  large  part  of 
mechanics  is  contained  in  the  lever  in  some- 
what the  same  manner  as  a  fully  developed 
plant  is  contained  in  a  seed. 

"It  was  not,  however,  from  the  see-saw  that 
I  learned  mechanics.  The  hay-pole  and  the 
pitchfork  are  excellent  means  of  developing  in 
a  boy's  mind  a  clear  knowledge  of  the  lever 
and  its  functions.  One  hour  in  a  hayfield  would 
demonstrate  this  to  your  entire  satisfaction, 
and  if  you  will  come  with  me  in  imagination 
to  those  Minnesota  bottoms  where  I  spent  my 
boyhood.  I  think  I  shall  be  able  to  prove  my 
point. 

"The  cocks  of  hay  that  we  used  to  make 
weighed  about  one  hundred  pounds  each.  The 
meadi  >\v  bottoms  were  soft  and  full  of  holes. 
The  hay-poles  were  of  light,  well-seasoned  pop- 
lar, about  ten  feet  long.  A  pair  of  these  poles 
was  pushed  under  a  cock  of  hay  and  the  leader 
kept  his  back  as  close  to  the  cock  as  possible 


152     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

so  as  to  give  the  man  who  followed  some 
chance  to  pick  his  steps. 

"In  this  arrangement  the  leader  carried  the 
heavier  load.  The  men  frequently  changed 
places  so  as  to  even  up  the  score.  The  pair 
of  hay-poles  thus  constituted  a  simple,  primi- 
tive pair  of  levers.  They  are  the  same  in  prin- 
ciple as  the  stretcher  and  the  sedan  chair,  and 
were  known  to  man  before  the  dawn  of  his- 
tory. They  teach  their  lesson  chiefly  through 
the  muscle  sense,  and  from  their  earliest  use 
man  must  have  recognized  the  relationship  ex- 
isting between  the  relative  lengths  of  the  two 
arms  of  the  lever  and  the  relative  distribution 
of  the  weight  which  the  two  men  carried. 

"The  concept  of  the  lever  is  developed  much 
more  fully  by  the  use  of  the  pitchfork.  In  the 
hay-pole  the  horizontal  position  is  practically 
maintained,  whereas  in  the  pitchfork,  the  lever 
rotates  through  half  a  circle.  Again,  in  the 
hay-pole  the  weight  is  always  in  the  middle  of 
the  lever,  whereas  in  the  pitchfork,  it  is  at  one 
end  and  the  power  and  fulcrum  are  one  in 
each  hand  of  the  havmaker. 


The  Germinal  Concept  in  Mechanics      153 

"If  the  right  hand  be  held  in  the  middle  of 
the  fork  handle  and  the  left  hand  at  the  ex- 
treme end,  twice  the  weight  of  the  hay  is  sus- 
tained by  the  right  hand  while  a  downward 
pressure  equal  to  the  weight  of  the  hay  is  exert- 
ed by  the  left  hand.  Now,  the  relative  posi- 
tions of  the  hands  on  the  fork  handle  are  con- 
stantly shifting,  and  so  the  haymaker  learns 
through  his  muscle  sense  the  meaning  of  the 
varying  lengths  of  the  lever  arms  and  the 
meaning  of  the  relative  positions  of  the  lever 
as  it  moves  round  the  axis  of  rotation. 

"In  the  hay-pole,  each  hand  is  both  power 
and  fulcrum  and  the  cock  of  hay  is  not  quite 
clearly  differentiated  weight,  since,  in  a  sense, 
it  is  the  axis  of  rotation  and  in  so  far  it  might 
be  regarded  as  a  fulcrum. 

"Again,  the  position  of  the  weight  on  the 
poles  is  not  sharply  defined.  In  the  fork,  on 
the  contrary,  the  weight  is  always  at  one  end 
and  it  is  sharply  differentiated  from  b'oth  power 
and  fulcrum.  Power  and  fulcrum,  however, 
are  not  clearly  differentiated,  since  either  po- 
sition mav  be  made  the  center  of  rotation,  and, 


154     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

as  a  matter  of  fact,  both  positions  are  partially 
centers  of  rotation. 

''It  may  thus  be  seen  that  there  is  a  distinct 
development  in  the  lever  as  we  pass  from  the 
hay-pole  to  the  pitchfork.  The  transition  from 
the  pitchfork  to  the  pulley  and  to  the  wheel 
and  axle  is  the  next  important  phase  in  the 
development  of  the  lever,  but  we  shall  have  to 
defer  its  consideration  until  we  meet  again 
after  the  summer  vacation." 


CHAPTER  XVI 

The  Development  of  the  Lever 

"Dr.  Studevan,"  said  Mr.  O'Brien,  "we  have 
deferred  the  reassembling  of  our  little  circle 
until  you  could  be  with  us,  as  we  wished  to 
hear  the  completion  of  your  story  before  tak- 
ing up  the  discussion  of  any  other  subject. 
"We  left  the  boy  in  the  meadows,  you  remem- 
ber, acquiring  a  mastery  of  mechanics  through 
exercise  with  hay-pole  and.  pitchfork.  We  are 
anxious  to  learn  of  the  circumstances  which 
brought  about  his  return  to  school." 

"I'm  sorry  that  my  absence  from  the  city 
has  caused  you  to  miss  any  of  these  delightful 
evenings.  I  was  beginning  to  fear  that  on  my 
return  to  Dunb'arton  Hall  I  should  find  you  so 
immersed  in  other  subjects  that  I  wouldn't 
have  an  opportunity  to  tell  you  any  of  the 
creditable  things  about  Studevan's  omadhaun." 

"Doctor,  I've  been  puzzling    my    brain    all 


156     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

summer  over  a  statement  you  made  at  our 
last  meeting  about  generating  a  wheel  from  a 
lever,"  said  Miss  Russell.  "Won't  you  please 
help  me  out  of  my  difficulty  before  proceeding 
with  your  story?" 

''I  shall  be  very  glad  to  do  so.  Miss  Russell, 
particularly,  as  that  bears  on  the  next  phase  of 
mental  development  that  I  shall  have  to  de- 
scribe. But  I  regret  that  so  long  a  time  has 
intervened  since  our  last  discussion  of  the  sim- 
ple forms  of  the  lever.  A  few  words  then 
would  have  sufficed  to  remove  your  difficulty. 
Let  me  refresh  your  memory  by  restating,  in 
as  few  words  as  possible,  what  I  said  on  that 
occasion  about  the  lever  and  its  functions. 

"The  lever  is  the  simplest  of  machines.  It 
may  affect  energy  in  any  one  of  four  ways : 
it  may  shift  the  point  of  application;  it  may 
reverse  the  direction  ;  it  may  increase  the  in- 
tensity, acting  through  a  diminished  distance; 
it  may  diminish  the  intensity,  acting  through 
an  increased  distance. 

"Xow,  let  us  apply  this  to  the  problem  of 
generating  a  wheel  from  a  lever.  Here  is  a 


The  Development  of  the  Lever         157 

wheel  from  a  toy  wagon  from  which  I  shall 
remove  the  rim,  leaving  the  four  spokes  in 
position.  These  four  spokes  constitute  two 
levers  having  a  common  fulcrum  in  my  pencil, 
which  I  shall  use  as  an  axle.  Let  us  consider 
first  this  pair  of  spokes  that  are  now  in  a  hori- 
zontal position.  They  constitute  a  lever  of 
equal  arms,  having  a  fulcrum  at  the  center. 
An  ounce  weight  at  one  end  of  this  lever  will 
b'alance  an  equal  weight  at  the  other  end,  and 
the  wheel  will  consequently  remain  at  rest. 

"Were  we  now  to  increase  one  of  these 
weights,  the  wheel  would  rotate  until  the 
heavier  weight  assumed  a  position  at  the  bot- 
tom where  it  would  come  to  rest,  with  the 
lever  in  a  vertical  position.  The  other  lever  is 
now  in  a  horizontal  position,  and  if  the  weights 
were  to  be  shifted  to  the  ends  of  this  lever,  the 
motion  would  be  repeated.  In  practice,  this 
would  prove  inconvenient,  and.  moreover,  the 
lever  does  perfect  work  only  while  it  remains 
in  a  horizontal  position.  As  it  departs  from 
the  horizontal  position,  its  functions,  when 
acting  against  gravity,  gradually  diminish  un- 


158     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

til  they  finally  reach  zero  when  the  lever  at- 
tains a  vertical  position. 

"These  two  defects  of  our  present  apparatus 
may  be  remedied  by  replacing  the  rim  on  the 
wheel,  or  by  choosing  a  solid  wheel  instead.  A 
horizontal  section  through  this  wheel  may  still 
be  considered  a  lever  of  equal  arms  with  its 
fulcrum  at  the  center.  If  instead  of  fastening 
our  weights  to  the  wheel  at  the  points  cor- 
responding to  the  ends  of  this  lever,  we  fas- 
ten them  to  the  ends  of  a  long  cord  and  pass 
the  cord  over  the  wheel,  we  shall  have  a  pulley. 

"If  the  weights  on  the  ends  of  the  cord  be 
equal,  the  pulley  will  remain  at  rest.  If  one 
weight  be  heavier  than  the  other,  it  will  de- 
scend, causing  the  wheel  to  rotate,  until  it 
reaches  some  support  or  until  the  other  weight 
reaches  the  wheel.  All  the  while  these  two 
weights  continue  to  act  on  a  horizontal  lever, 
consisting  of  a  section  of  the  wheel  passing 
through  the  fulcrum  and  the  points  where  the 
cord  leaves  the  wheel. 

"While  we  are  dealing  with  this  matter  it 
mav  be  as  well  to  mention  one  or  two  other 


The   Development  of  the   Lever          159 

points  about  machines  that  will  serve  to  throw 
light  upon  the  phase  of  mental  development 
which  I  shall  presently  try  to  explain.  The 
functions  of  the  lever  which  we  have  just  con- 
sidered are  the  shifting  of  the  point  of  appli- 
cation of  the  energy  and  the  reversing  of  its 
direction. 

"The  intensifying  of  the  energy  or  the  in- 
creasing of  the  distance  through  which  it  acts, 
is  secured  by  the  use  of  the  lever  of  unequal 
amis,  or  by  the  form  of  lever  that  has  its  ful- 
crum at  one  end. 

"If  we  support  one  end  of  a  lever  and  hang 
a  weight  of  two  ounces  to  its  center,  there  will 
be  a  downward  pressure  of  one  ounce  exerted 
on  its  free  end.  If  we  lift  the  free  end  through 
two  inches,  the  center  will  be  lifted  but  one 
inch.  Here  we  have  a  power  of  one  ounce  lift- 
ing a  weight  of  two  ounces  through  one-half 
the  distance  which  the  one  ounce  of  power 
moves. 

"It  is  evident  that  this  same  function  might 
be  performed  by  the  pulley.  If  we  fasten  one 
end  of  the  cord  which  passes  over  the  pulley 


160     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

and  attach  one  ounce  to  the  other  end,  this  one 
ounce  will  exert  a  downward  pressure  of  two 
ounces  on  the  pulley,  and  if  the  pulley  be  free 
to  move,  it  will  descend  only  one-half  the  dis- 
tance through  which  the  weight  at  the  free 
end  of  the  cord  moves.  There  is  here  a  fixed 
ratio  between  power  and  weight  and  this  ratio 
is  inversely  as  the  distances  through  which 
they  move.  The  one  is  always  just  one-half  of 
the  other.  If  we  wish  to  increase  this  ratio, 
we  must  increase  the  number  of  our  pulleys. 

"\Ye  might,  however,  increase  the  ratio  of 
power  to  weight  by  using  a  lever  of  unequal 
arms.  If  we  support  one  end  of  a  lever  four 
inches  long,  and  attach  a  weight  of  six  ounces 
one  inch  from  the  point  of  support,  the  weight 
will  exert  a  downward  pressure  of  only  one 
ounce  at  the  free  end  of  the  lever.  If  we 
have  a  lever  four  inches  long  with  the  fulcrum 
one  inch  from  the  end,  a  weight  of  one  ounce 
at  the  end  of  the  long  arm  will  balance  a  weight 
of  three  ounces  at  the  end  of  the  short  arm. 

"If  we  rotate  a  lever  of  this  sort  around  its 
fulcrum,  its  ends  will  describe  two  concentric 


The  Development  of  the   Lever     •    161 

circles,  the  radii  of  which  are  to  each  other 
as  the  respective  lengths  of  the  lever  arms.  If, 
now,  two  pulleys  corresponding  in  size  to  the 
concentric  circles  be  fastened  together  and  made 
to  rotate  on  a  common  axis,  a  weight  of  one 
ounce  fastened  to  the  cord  which  unwinds  from 
the  larger  wheel  will  lift  a  weight  of  three 
ounces  fastened  to  a  cord  which  winds  on  the 
smaller  wheel.  We  have  here  what  is  known 
in  mechanics  as  the  wheel  and  axle;  through  its 
use  the  ratio  of  power  to  weight  may  be  varied 
within  wide  limits. 

"It  will  not  be  necessary  for  me  to  impose 
upon  your  patience  by  asking  you  to  listen  to 
further  explanations  of  the  elements  of  me- 
chanics, or  to  the  way  in  which  they  may  be 
mastered  even  by  the  dullest  of  pupils,  since 
the  simple  farm  machinery  that  was  familiar 
to  my  boyhood  consisted  for  the  most  part 
of  the  lever,  the  pulley,  and  the  wheel  and 
axle  combined  in  various  ways  and  modified  at 
times  in  the  form  of  the  eccentric  and  the  crank- 
shaft." 


CHAPTER  XVII 

Sense  Experience  and  Literature 

"While  Minnesota  was  still  a  part  of  the 
great  north-west  territory,  there  was  dug  on 
our  farm  a  well,  six  by  six  and  eighty-five  feet 
deep.  This  was  curbed  with  dressed  sand- 
stone, which  left  a  round  open  well  that  yielded 
an  inexhaustible  supply  of  delicious  spring 
water,  which  soon  earned  for  it  an  enviable 
reputation,  even  in  that  land  of  lakes. 

"A  lattice  with  a  projecting  roof  covered  the 
well.  A  pulley  such  as  I  have  just  described 
was  suspended  from  the  center  of  the  roof. 
Ninety  feet  of  inch  rope  passing  over  this 
pulley  with  a  pair  of  'old  oaken,  iron-bound, 
moss-covered  buckets'  attached  to  the  ends  of  it 
by  means  of  a  few  feet  of  chain  completed  the 
apparatus  for  drawing  water. 

"During  my  boyhood  flays  the  pump  and 
windmill  replaced  the  open  well  on  the  sur- 
rounding farms,  but  up  to  the  day  we  left  the 


Sense   Experience    and    Literature        163 

old  farm  sentiment  kept  the  old  oaken  bucket 
hanging-  in  our  well,  and  nowhere  else  has 
water  ever  tasted  so  sweet  to  me  as  from  its 
battered  rim. 

"On  opposite  sides  of  the  enclosing  lattice- 
work two  doors  opened  down  to  within  three 
feet  of  the  surrounding  platform.  I  do  not 
remember  when  I  first  drew  water  from  the  old 
well,  but  I  have  a  vivid  recollection  of  pulling 
on  the  wet  rope  when  I  was  scarcely  tall  enough 
to  reach  it,  and  I  remember,  too,  how  tired  I 
used  to  be  before  the  seemingly  endless  rope 
finally  brought  the  bucket  to  view.  It  frequent- 
ly happened  that  my  sister  helped  me,  one  of 
us  pulling  down  on  the  rope  at  one  side  of  the 
well,  while  the  other  pulled  up  on  the  rope  at 
the  other  side. 

"Looking  back  from  this  distance,  I  remem- 
ber that  \ve  had  a  clear  realization  of  the  fact 
that  the  bucket  was  heaviest  at  the  bottom  of 
the  well,  but  we  attributed  this  to  the  great 
depth  of  the  well  without  suspecting  that  the 
weight  of  ninety  feet  of  wet  rope  was  added 
to  the  weight  of  the  bucket  of  water  at  the 


164     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

beginning  of  its  upward  journey ;  and  that  this 
same  heavy  rope  acted  as  a  counterpoise  as  the 
bucket  neared  the  surface.  We  fully  realized 
the  fact  that  it  was  much  easier  to  pull  down 
on  the  rope  than  to  pull  up  on  it,  although  I  am 
very  sure  that  neither  of  us  suspected  that  this 
might  b'e  in  any  way  connected  with  the  habits 
of  our  remote  ancestors. 

"Thus  through  their  senses  and  their  muscles 
children  come  to  a  realization  of  many  truths 
in  their  concrete  setting  without  troubling 
themselves  to  seek  out  the  hidden  springs  of  the 
results  which  most  deeply  interest  them.  Truth 
grows  in  their  minds  from  germs  of  this  sort 
and  the  full  beauty  and  flower  appear  much 
later. 

"None  of  us  could  have  written  'The  Old 
Oaken  Bucket/  but  our  experience  with  this 
well  gave  a  depth  and  a  meaning  to  the  words 
of  the  poem  quite  unattainable  by  one  whose 
childhood  knew  no  similar  experience.  And 
few  things  call  up  more  vivid  recollections  of 
mv  boyhood  than  the  lines: 


Sense   Experience   and   Literature        165 

'How  dear  to  this  heart  are  the  scenes  of  my 

childhood, 
When    fond    recollection    presents    them    to 

view ! 
The   orchard,    the   meadow,    the   deep-tangled 

wildwood, 
And   every   loved   spot   which   my     infancy 

knew ; 
The  wide-spreading  pond,  the  mill  which  stood 

by  it, 
The  bridge,  and  the  rock  where  the  cataract 

fell ; 

The  cot  of  my  father,  the  dairy-house  nigh  it, 
And  e'en  the  rude  bucket  which  hung  in  the 

well ! 

The  old  oaken  bucket,  the  iron-bound  bucket. 
The  moss-covered  bucket,  which  hung  in    the 
well. 

'That  moss-covered  vessel  I  hail  as  a  treasure; 

For  often,  at  noon,  when  returned  from  the 

field. 
I  found  it  the  source  of  an  exquisite  pleasure, 

The  purest  and  sweetest  that  nature  can  yield. 


1 66     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

How  ardent  I  seized  it,  with  hands  that  were 

glowing ; 

And  quick  to  the  white  pebbled  bottom  it  fell ; 
Then   soon,   with   the   emblem   of   truth   over- 
flowing, 
And  dripping  with  coolness,  it  rose  from  the 

well : 

The  old  oaken  bucket,  the  iron-bound  bucket, 
The  moss-covered  bucket  that  hung  in  the  well. 

'How  sweet  from  the  green  mossy  brim  to  re- 
ceive it. 

As  poised  on  the  curb  it  inclined  to  my  lips! 
Not  a  full  blushing  goblet  could  tempt  me  to 

leave  it. 
Though  filled  with  the  nectar  that  Jupiter 

sips. 

And  now,  far  removed  from  the  loved  situa- 
tion. 

The  tear  of  regret  will  intrusively  swell, 
As  fancy  reverts  to  my  father's  plantation. 
And  sighs  for  the  bucket  which  hangs  in  the 

well : 
The  old  oaken  bucket,  the  iron-bound  bucket, 


Sense   Experience   and   Literature        167 

The  moss-covered  bucket,  which  hangs  in  the 
well.' 

"Our  early  sense  experiences,  after  all,  deter- 
mine, in  large  measure,  the  meaning  which  liter- 
ature holds  for  us  in  after  life." 

"That  is  true.  Doctor,"  said  Miss  Ruth,  "and 
any  schoolroom  may  furnish  pathetic  instances 
of  the  meager  content  the  child  finds  in  even 
simple  word  pictures  when  he  lacks  the  sense 
experience  required  to  invest  the  picture  with 
life  and  meaning.  How  little  a  child  may  get 
from  this  very  poem  that  is  so  full  of  beauty 
and  feeling  for  you.  was  illustrated  the  other 
day  in  a  fourth  grade  room  that  I  was  visiting. 

"The  class  was  studying  the  Old  Oaken 
Bucket,  and  the  children  were  told  to  illustrate 
with  their  crayons  what  the  poem  meant  to 
them.  One  dear  little  girl,  who  had  spent  all 
of  her  ten  years  in  a  city  and  who  had  evi- 
dently never  seen  an  open  well,  brought  me  her 
paper  on  which  were  sketched  three  wooden 
pails  that  differed  from  each  other  chiefly  in 
color  effects.  The  first  was  plain  brown,  the 


1 68     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

second  had  a  series  of  black  bands  around  it, 
and  the  third  was  covered  in  places  with  green 
fuzz.  Towards  the  bottom  of  the  paper  there 
were  a  number  of  irregular  color  patches. 
When  I  asked  her  why  she  had  three  buckets, 
there  was  not  a  little  of  the  child's  pity  for  the 
ignorance  of  grown-ups  in  her  ready  answer, 
that  one  was  the  old  oaken  bucket,  the  next  was 
the  iron-bound  bucket,  and  the  third  was  the 
moss-covered  bucket.  And,  when  I  sought  en- 
lightenment on  the  meaning  of  the  color 
patches,  she  looked  up  at  me  and  replied,  with 
a  tone  of  triumph  in  her  voice,  'they  are  all  the 
loved  spots  which  my  infancy  knew.' 

"Woodworth's  poem  must  be  responsible  for 
similar  experiences  in  many  a  schoolroom," 
said  Professor  Shannon.  "Ten  years  ago  I 
heard  Miss  Rliza  Haley  of  Chicago  tell  of  these 
'loved  spots,'  and  Professor  O'Shea  has  a  simi- 
lar story  in  his  Dynamic  Factors  of  Education." 

"If  I  am  not  anticipating  your  story,  Doc- 
tor." said  the  Judge,  "I  should  like  to  ask 
whether  YOU  trace  to  literature  like  the  'Old 


Sense   Experience   and   Literature        169 

Oaken  Bucket'  the  beginning  of  your  taste  for 

books?" 

"No,  literature  of  that  order  appeals  only 
to  the  mature.  The  actual  experience  of  child- 
hood and  youth,  such  as  that  of  drawing  water 
from  the  old  well,  bear  their  rich  fruit  in  later 
life.  The  child,  the  savage,  and  the  undevel- 
oped generally,  crave  action  and  a  play  of  the 
imagination.  Fairy  tales,  detective  stories,  and 
the  idealistic  novel  appeal  to  them  rather  than 
fine  descriptions  of  familiar  scenes  and  events. 
The  mature  find  much  of  their  enjoyment  in 
the  past ;  the  immature  live  in  the  indefinite  fu- 
ture. The  immature  appreciate  only  action  and 
large  outlines ;  the  mature  delight  in  subtle  un- 
dercurrents, in  the  play  of  motives,  and  in  ac- 
curacv  of  detail." 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
A  Ray  of  Hope 

"At  the  time  of  which  I  speak,  I  was  sunk 
in  such  deep  discouragement  that  I  question 
whether  any  form  of  literature  could  have 
reached  me.  There  was  nothing  in  the  past 
that  interested  me,  and  my  horizon  extended 
but  little  beyond  my  father's  farm.  I  was 
wholly  absorbed  by  the  various  employments 
in  which  I  was  engaged.  Some  measure  of 
self-reliance,  some  little  confidence  in  my  own 
mental  powers,  was  my  one  great  need  at  that 
time,  and  this  I  finally  attained  through  the 
mastery  of  the  simple  machinery  with  which 
I  worked. 

''So  long  as  we  use  a  machine  in  the  form 
in  which  it  is  given  to  us  and  for  the  attain- 
ment of  only  those  ends  which  were  contem- 
plated by  its  builder,  the  machine  remains  our 
master.  Our  masterv  over  the  machine  dates 


A  Ray  of  Hope  171 

from  the  moment  in  which  we  learn  to  modify 
it  and  to  adapt  it  to  our  purposes. 

"If  I  were  lecturing  on  pedagogy  instead  of 
telling  you  how  I  came  up  out  of  the  dark- 
ness, I  would  emphasize  the  fact  that  we  have 
here  reached  a  principle  of  universal  applica- 
tion. It  is  as  true  of  methods  as  it  is  of  ma- 
chines; as  long  as  we  accept  any  method  liter- 
ally and  carry  it  out  in  all  its  details  as  it  is 
set  forth  by  an  authority,  the  method  remains 
our  master.  Our  control  over  the  method  dates 
from  the  time  when  we  learn  to  modify  it  and 
to  adjust  it  to  each  present  situation. 

"But  to  return  to  my  story.  My  early  famil- 
iarity with  simple  machinery  laid  the  sure 
foundations  of  my  subsequent  knowledge  of 
mechanics ;  but  it  had  another  result  of  much 
greater  value  to  me.  My  attempts  to  modify 
a  few  of  the  simple  farm  machines,  produced 
in  me  the  first  discernible  germ  of  self-re- 
liance, the  dawn  of  faith  in  my  own  mental 
powers. 

"The  first  instance  of  this  kind  that  I  can 


172     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

recall  occurred  in  my  thirteenth  year.  In  the 
morning,  while  the  dew  prevented  us  from 
gathering  up  the  cured  hay,  it  was  my  usual 
task  to  turn  the  grindstone  on  which  the  mow- 
ers sharpened  their  scythes.  Xow,  a  new  grind- 
stone has  a  large  diameter,  and  a  low  speed 
of  the  crank  suffices ;  b'ut  as  the  stone  wears 
down  to  a  small  core,  a  progressive  increase  in 
speed  is  required  for  the  attainment  of  satis- 
factory results,  and  this  increase  of  speed  adds 
considerably  to  a  task  which  at  best  is  tire- 
some. 

"One  morning  towards  the  close  of  the  hay- 
ing season,  when  the  stone  was  worn  down  to 
a  small  core,  and  the  mowers  were  in  a  hurry, 
my  patience  reached  its  limit.  The  urgent  haste 
and  my  tired  muscles  both  cried  out  for  a  rem- 
edy, and  the  first  suggestion  of  this  remedy 
came  to  me  from  previous  muscular  exertions, 
which  have,  throughout  all  human  progress, 
been  the  prolific  source  of  inventions. 

"A  device  was  needed  that  would  cause  the 
grindstone  to  revolve  faster  than  the  crank. 
I  remembered  that  this  end  was  actually  at- 


A  Ray  of  Hope  173 

tained  in  a  fanning  mill  that  I  had  spent  many 
a  long  day  in  turning.  The  handle  of  the  mill 
was  attached  to  a  large  cogwheel,  each  revolu- 
tion of  which  caused  a  small  pinion  attached 
to  the  shaft  of  the  fan  to  revolve  several  times. 
I  there  and  then  resolved  to  transfer  the  wheel 
and  pinion  from  the  discarded  fanning  mill 
to  the  grindstone. 

"When,  some  days  later,  I  attempted  to  carry 
out  this  resolution,  I  failed  completely ;  and  my 
failure  brought  down  upon  my  head  the  ridi- 
cule that  greeted  all  my  attempts  to  depart 
from  the  trodden  paths.  But  there  was  a  note- 
worthy difference  in  my  mental  attitude  on  this 
occasion  from  that  which  followed  former  fail- 
ures. In  this  instance  I  had  obtained  a  clear 
view  of  a  mechanical  truth  that  neither  failure 
nor  ridicule  could  obscure. 

"I  did  not  realize  all  the  elements  in  my  fail- 
ure. It  seemed  to  me  to  be  wholly  due  to 
my  lack  of  mechanical  skill  in  carrying  out  my 
idea,  and  indeed  this  was  the  chief  cause  of 
my  failure.  The  bearings  on  which  the  a\le 
of  the  o-nndstone  turned  were  of  such  a  nature 


174     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

that  they  would  not  hold  the  shaft  in  position 
in  the  new  arrangement.  As  soon  as  I  at- 
tempted to  turn  the  grindstone,  the  pinion 
slipped  away  from  the  larger  wheel,  and,  at 
that  time,  I  had  not  sufficient  ingenuity  to  de- 
vise a  method  that  would  hold  the  shaft  of  the 
grindstone  at  the  requisite  distance  from  the 
shaft  of  the  larger  wheel. 

"Had  there  been  a  mechanic  present,  he 
might  have  pointed  out  another  source  of  fail- 
ure that  would  have  remained,  even  had  I  suc- 
ceeded in  remedying  the  defect  of  which  I  was 
conscious.  The  large  wheel  was  fully  ten  times 
as  large  as  the  small  one,  consequently  the  stone 
would  have  to  turn  ten  rounds  to  each  round  of 
the  crank,  which  is  too  high  a  speed  for  the 
power  available  in  a  boy's  arm. 

"It  was  fortunate  for  me  that  no  one 
pointed  out  the  various  shortcomings  in 
my  device,  for  that  would  probably  have 
discouraged  me  from  further  attempts  in 
the  same  direction.  As  it  was,  I  could  see 
only  one  cause  of  failure,  and  my  mind  busied 
itself  with  seeking  a  remedy  for  this. 


A  Ray  of  Hope  175 

"There  was  another  grindstone  on  the  farm, 
an  heirloom  of  territorial  days,  which  was  used 
only  for  rough  work,  such  as  grinding  grub- 
hoes  and  axes.  It  had  been  hewn  from  a  large 
block  of  sandstone  at  the  time  the  masons 
were  curbing  the  well.  It  weighed  several 
hundred  pounds.  The  shaft  was  made  in  a 
forge  and  it  turned  in  metal  boxes.  I  trans- 
ferred the  wheel  and  pinion  to  this  grindstone 
and  succeeded,  with  strenuous  efforts,  in  caus- 
ing the  grindstone  to  revolve  at  a  very  high 
speed,  but  of  course  the  least  pressure  on  the 
stone  acted  as  a  brake  and  rendered  it  impos- 
sible for  me  to  keep  it  in  motion.  Besides,  the 
rapid  rotation  soon  shook  the  old  wooden 
frame  to  pieces. 

"It  was  another  failure,  but  the  failure  was 
not  complete.  I.  had  actually  accomplished 
what  I  set  out  to  do,  that  is,  I  had  made  the 
grindstone  turn,  and  turn  rapidly,  and  I  be- 
lieved that  the  failure  to  secure  permanent  re- 
sults was  due,  in  large  measure,  to  the  great 
weight  of  the  grindstone ;  besides,  I  had  inci- 
dentally come  upon  the  play  of  inertia  and  the 


176     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

function  of  a  balance  wheel  in  mechanics.  Nev- 
ertheless, this  second  failure  and  the  ridicule 
that  accompanied  it  made  me  pause,  and  more 
than  two  years  elapsed  before  my  next  attempt 
to  become  an  inventor." 


CHAPTER  XIX 
Judicious  Praise 

"Doctor,  didn't  your  efforts  to  improve  the 
grindstone  make  your  people  realize  that  there 
were  better  things  in  store  for  you?"  asked 
Mrs.  O'Brien. 

"No,  I  am  afraid  not.  Of  course  it  is  easy 
enough  for  us  now.  in  the  light  of  suteequent 
<ie\  elopments,  to  recognize  in  these  first  crude 
attempts  the  awakening  of  my  mind;  but  to 
those  around  me  then,  who  had  settled  con- 
victions of  long  standing  concerning  the  lim- 
itations of  my  intelligence,  it  could  scarcely 
have  seemed  a  creditable  achievement  merely 
to  shake  to  pieces  the  frame  of  the  old  grind- 
stone without  obtaining  any  practical  results. 

"A  word  of  praise  at  that  time  or  an  appre- 
ciation, however  slight,  of  the  thought  I  was 
endeavoring  to  work  out  would  have  been 
grateful  to  me  and  it  would  probably  have 


178     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

hastened  my  development  along  mechanical 
lines.  But,  after  all,  I  question  whether  it  was 
not  better  as  it  was.  Premature  praise  often 
proves  mischievous,  particularly  when  it  tends 
to  produce  a  forced  growth.  I  feel  sure  that 
it  was  fortunate  for  me  that  the  seeds  of  me- 
chanical truths  planted  in  my  mind  by  these 
early  experiments,  were  allowed  to  germinate 
there  undisturbed.  As  it  turned  out,  they  grew 
and  bore  abundant  fruit  in  due  season." 

''Don't  you  believe  in  praising  children  for 
their  partial  successes.  Doctor?"  asked  Miss 
Russell.  "I  have  often  heard  you  say  that  you 
are  opposed  to  premiums  and  to  punishments 
for  children;  and  if  you  refuse  the  teacher  the 
privilege  of  praising  them,  what  incentive  has 
she  to  offer  to  induce  them  to  study?" 

"I  do  believe  in  praise.  Miss  Russell,  but  I  do 
not  believe  in  premature  or  injudicious  praise, 
ft  requires  no  mean  skill  and  the  greatest  care 
on  the  part  of  the  teacher  to  mete  out  due 
praise  to  the  children  for  worthy  achievements 
without  thereby  lifting  praise  into  a  motive 
for  their  future  actions,  which  would  be  fatal 
to  their  best  interests. 


Judicious  Praise  179 

"The  best  development  of  mind  and  heart 
can  be  attained  only  when  external  motives 
are  reduced  to  a  minimum  or  when  they  are 
excluded  altogether.  There  is  no  real  progress 
in  intellectual  life  until  the  delight  in  the  dis- 
covery of  truth  becomes  the  controlling  mo- 
tive ;  just  as  there  is  no  real  goodness  until 
conduct  is  governed  by  love  of  God  and  fellow- 
man.  Is  not  this  what  our  Saviour  meant  when 
He  said,  'Do  ye  good,  therefore,  hoping  for 
nothing  thereby,  and  your  reward  shall  be 
very  great'  ? 

"The  injudicious  praise  I  had  in  mind  just 
now  inflicts  an  injury  of  a  different  sort  on  the 
growing  mind.  By  praising  the  child  for  his 
success  along  some  one  line  we  are  liable  there- 
by to  concentrate  all  his  efforts  in  that  direc- 
tion. Xow,  an  early  concentration  of  effort 
in  one  direction  results  in  too  narrow  a  basis 
for  good  mental  development,  even  in  the 
chosen  branch.  Where  this  occurs  the  mature 
mind  will  be  found  lacking  in  balance  and  sym- 
metry. The  man  may  become  a  specialist,  but 
he  will  have  all  the  narrowness  and  the  lack 
of  insisrht  into  the  broader  affairs  of  life  that 


180     The  Making-  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

so  frequently  characterize  the  technical  ex- 
pert." 

"It  would  be  interesting  to  know  what  praise 
you  do  believe  in,"  said  the  Professor,  "since 
praising  children  for  their  successes  results,  ac- 
cording to  your  theories,  in  making  praise  the 
motive  of  their  subsequent  endeavors,  and  this 
you  say  would  exclude  them  from  the  higher 
realms  of  life.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  by 
praising  children  for  success  along  some  one 
line  we  are  liable  to  destroy  balance  in  their 
development  and  to  produce  narrow  minded 
cranks." 

"I  have  already  said,  Professor,  that  I  re- 
gard it  as  one  of  the  teacher's  most  difficult 
tasks  to  mete  out  judicious  praise  to  the  chil- 
dren for  whose  mental  and  moral  development 
she  is  responsible.  In  my  remarks  just  now 
I  intended  to  indicate  the  two  ways  in  which 
the  unskilled  teacher  is  most  likely  to  fail  in 
the  performance  of  her  duty.  It  is,  indeed,  no 
easy  matter  to  so  praise  a  child  as  to  increase 
his  joy  in  the  achievement  itself,  yet  it  is  not 
impossible.  But  praise  too  frequently  results 


Judicious  Praise  181 

in  turning  the  child  away  from  his  ideal  of  per- 
fection in  the  chosen  field  and  in  making  him 
seek  the  teacher's  commendation  instead.  Such 
praise  transforms  the  child  of  the  kingdom 
into  the  hireling. 

"Again,  it  is  one  of  the  teacher's  chief  duties 
to  preserve  balance  in  the  child's  developmental 
tendencies.  But  when  she  praises  him  for 
successes  in  the  lines  in  which  his  talents  are 
most  pronounced  she  is  exaggerating  his  asym- 
metry instead  of  correcting  it.  The  teacher 
should  constantly  endeavor  to  awaken  the 
child's  interest  and  to  stimulate  his  efforts  in 
those  directions  in  which  he  exhibits  the  least 
natural  tendency  to  develop.  Judicious  praise 
is  here  an  invaluable  aid  in  restoring"  and  pre- 
serving balance  in  the  child's  mental  develop- 
ment. I  am  convinced  that  we  seldom  praise 
a  child  for  his  efforts  along  the  line  of  his 
chief  talent  without  thereby  injuring  him. 

"Had  my  attempts  to  improve  the  grind- 
stone met  with  appreciation  and  applause,  I 
might  have  become  a  mechanic,  but  all  the 
wider  development  that  actually  came  to  me  in 


1 82     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

after  years  would  have  been  excluded.  I  was 
then  living  in  a  state  of  chronic  discourage- 
ment and,  had  my  crude  attempts  at  invention 
brought  me  the  praise  for  which  my  whole 
being  hungered,  all  my  energy  would  have 
been  directed  into  this  one  narrow  channel,  and 
other  elements  that  were  quite  essential  for 
the  full  development  of  even  my  mechanical 
power  would  have  been  omitted. 

"As  it  was,  I  was  more  keenly  conscious 
of  failure  than  I  was  of  success.  Indeed,  the 
only  success  that  appeared  to  me  was  a  rather 
hazy  figure  in  the  background ;  I  had  gained 
an  abiding  conviction,  in  spite  of  the  imme- 
diate failures,  that  my  plans  would  work  if 
properly  carried  out.  Nevertheless,  the  fail- 
ures were  the  things  I  most  keenly  felt,  and 
they  served  to  check  for  a  time  the  tendency 
to  develop  in  this  direction. 

"During  the  two  years  that  followed  my 
mind  was  chiefly  occupied  with  the  develop- 
ment of  the  number  concept  in  connection 
with  the  sacking  and  hauling  of  grain  and 
with  the  development  of  spatial  relationships 


Judicious  Praise  183 

in  the  measurement  of  lumber.  I  have  already 
given  you  an  account  of  these  developmental 
phases.  These  three  lines  of  development,  over- 
lapped and  blended  in  many  ways,  formed  the 
basis  of  my  subsequent  mental  life." 


CHAPTER  XX 
The  Dance  of  the  Moonbeams 

'The  year  1878  was  a  memorable  one  in  mv 
life.  It  was  during  this  year  that  the  first 
ray  of  hope  penetrated  the  gloom  of  discour- 
agement in  which  I  lived  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
my  mind  had  been  steadily  growing  during 
the  two  or  three  preceding  years,  but  the  mani- 
festations of  this  growth  were  such  as  to  es- 
cape recognition  by  those  interested  in  me;  and 
nothing  would  have  surprised  me  more  at  the 
rime  than  to  1/e  told  that  my  mind  was  awaken- 
ing and  giving  promise  of  a  development  that 
would  one  day  make  me  the  equal  of  the  farm 
lads  of  the  neighborhood.  Indeed,  I  believe 
there  was  no  time  during  the  seven  years 
that  had  gone  before  in  which  I  had  a  more 
poignant  conviction  of  my  mental  incapacity 
than  during  the  few  months  preceding  the 
completion  of  my  sixteenth  year.  This  was 
probably  due  to  the  fact  that  my  awakening 


The  Dance  of  the  Moonbeams  185 

mind  was  beginning  to  compare  my  own  con- 
dition, or  the  estimate  in  which  I  was  held  by 
others,  with  the  positions  of  those  around  me, 
who  were  credited  with  the  possession  of  nor- 
mal faculties. 

"It  was  during  this  year  also  that  my  taste 
for  reading  was  awakened ;  but  this  line  of  de- 
velopment proceeded  slowly  and  had  no  part 
in  my  first  mental  successes  which  were  clearly 
traceable  to  a  nucleus  of  growth  organized  out 
of  experiences  derived  through  my  muscles  and 
sense  of  touch. 

"My  mind,  hemmed  in  by  the  narrow  hori- 
zon of  one  debarred  from  the  realm  of  letters, 
busied  itself  in  combining  and  re-combining 
memory  pictures  that  had  b'een  gained  through 
these  fundamental  senses ;  and  thus  there  was 
laid  the  foundation  of  a  constructive  imagina- 
tion which  I  still  number  among  my  most 
valued  mental  possessions." 

"But.  Doctor,  were  you  not  endeavoring  to 
spell  out  some  puzzle,  or  to  work  out  some 
mechanical  scheme?"  asked  Miss  Ruth.  "You 
surelv  do  not  mean  that  the  mere  aimless  play 


1 86     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

of  imagination,  day-dreaming,  leads  to  valuable 
results !" 

"Day-dreaming  played  an  important  part  in 
rescuing  me  from  dullarddom,  but  I  would  be 
very  sorry,  merely  on  this  account,  to  give  un- 
qualified endorsement  to  every  clay-dreamer. 
There  is  day-dreaming  and  day-dreaming,  you 
know.  The  wise  man  in  his  silence  has  often 
been  likened  to  the  fool,  but  the  likeness  is 
superficial.  The  one  is  silent  because  he  deems 
it  unwise  to  express  his  thought;  the  other  is 
silent  because  he  has  no  thought  to  express. 

"The  lax  muscles  and  the  vacant  stare  of  the 
dawdler  should  not  be  accepted  as  prima  facie 
evidence  of  day-dreaming,  or,  if  so,  we  are  in 
need  of  some  other  term  to  designate  that  con- 
dition of  mind,  so  characteristic  of  the  frontiers 
of  thought,  in  which  the  attention  is  wholly 
absorbed  by  the  play  of  eager  elements  of  men- 
tal growth  and  in  which  mere  sentient  phe- 
nomena are  transfigured  by  the  light  of  truth. 

"The  consideration  of  day-dreams  of  this 
sort  brings  me  back  to  an  August  evening 
spent  on  the  Mississippi  river  some  years  ago.  I 


The  Dance  of  the  Moonbeams  187 

was  leaning  over  the  rail  on  the  deck  of  the  City 
of  Dubuque  watching  the  wave  that  was  being 
molded  by  the  prow  of  the  boat  on  the  smooth 
surface  of  the  river.  As  this  wave  receded  ob- 
liquely toward  the  neighboring  bank  it  stole  a 
broad  band  of  silver  from  the  full  harvest  moon 
and  bent  it  to  its  form  in  Hogarth's  line  of 
beauty.  This  band  lengthened  and  shortened, 
softened  and  accentuated  its  curves  from  mo- 
ment to  moment,  as  the  boat,  veering  in  its 
course,  presented  the  wave  to  the  moonbeam 
in  a  constantly  changing  angle.  As  I  looked 
back  from  this  unbroken  band  of  silver  light 
to  a  bend  in  the  river  a  mile  distant,  I  was 
captivated  by  a  veritable  dance  of  the  sprites. 
The  waves  formed  by  the  prow  of  the  boat, 
impinging  upon  the  uneven  banks,  were  re- 
flected at  widely  divergent  angles ;  they  crossed 
and  recrossed,  breaking  up  into  a  thousand 
rounded  fragments,  each  of  which  caught  a 
moonbeam  and  whirled  with  it  in  an  elfin  dance 
of  exquisite  beauty." 

"The  parable,  Doctor,  give  us  the  parable," 
said  Professor  Shannon.     "I  had  counted    on 


1 88     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

being  at  home  before  this  time,  but  of  course 
I  never  would  be  forgiven  if  I  left  without 
the  moral  that  is  to  adorn  your  tale." 

"Patience,  Professor,  or  if  you  feel  that  you 
must  leave  us,  I  will  promise  you  a  ready 
pardon.  But  the  parable  is  this :  the  unbroken 
waves  formed  by  the  prow  of  the  boat  are  the 
primary  mental  pictures  born  of  the  contact 
of  mind  with  matter  through  the  channels  of 
sense.  The  curved  bands  of  moonlight  impris- 
oned in  the  receding  waves  are  the  glimpses 
of  truth  from  beyond  the  realm  of  matter  that 
reach  the  mind  through  these  pictures.  The 
length  of  the  imprisoned  band  of  moonlight 
and  the  sharpness  or  softness  of  its  curves  de- 
pend on  the  angle  of  vision  even  as  divergent 
points  of  view  give  varied  meanings  to  similar 
sense  experiences. 

"Now,  the  elfin  dance  of  the  waves  and  the 
moonbeams  is  the  day-dream  that  has  ever 
preceded  the  exact  formulation  of  human 
knowledge.  The  play  of  fecund  memory  pic- 
tures, born  of  the  embrace  of  mind  and  matter, 
has  ever  been  man's  inspiration  in  the  con- 


The  Dance  of  the  Moonbeams  189 

quest  of  truth.  In  this  apparently  aimless 
play  of  combining  memory  pictures  the  mind 
catches  glimpses  of  b'eauty  and  hints  of  unre- 
vealed  truths  that  rouse  the  whole  man  to  the 
eager  and  persistent  effort  in  pursuit  that  has 
ever  marked  the  artist  and  the  discoverer  in 
the  ik-lds  of  pure  science." 


CHAPTER  XXI 

A  Day-Dream 

"Doctor,"  said  Miss  Ruth,  "I  am  sure  we 
all  feel  grateful  to  you  for  the  beautiful  illus- 
tration of  day-dreaming  you  gave  us  last  Fri- 
day evening,  so  I  cannot  regret  having  asked 
the  question  that  T  did ;  but  don't  forget,  please, 
that  we  are  anxiously  waiting  for  you  to  tell 
us  how  day-dreaming  helped  you  to  come  up 
out  of  the  gloom." 

"No,  I  have  not  forgotten,  Miss  Ruth ;  I 
had,  in  reality,  intended  to  tell  you  that  story 
the  other  evening,  but  Professor  Shannon  got 
frightened  at  the  moonbeams  and  broke  up  the 
meeting. 

"The  day-dream  is  seldom  articulate  enough 
to  issue  in  language ;  it  is  thought  in  embryo, 
and  it  should  see  the  light  of  day  in  action 
before  being  clothed  in  words.  Its  soft  out- 
lines rapidly  fade  from  memory  unless  they  be- 
come shaply  defined  in  some  concrete  embodi- 
ment. 


A  Day-Dream  191 

"In  the  summer  of  1878  I  had  a  day-dream 
that  issued  almost  immediately  in  practical  re- 
sults of  the  greatest  importance  to  me.  In 
this  circumstance  may  be  found  the  explana- 
tion of  the  fact  that  even  the  smallest  details 
of  that  day-dream  are  still  clearly  and  indelibly 
stamped  upon  my  memory. 

"It  was  early  June,  my  brother  and  I  were 
hauling  timothy  hay  to  market.  For  eight 
miles  our  road  wound  along  the  margin  of  the 
high  bluff  on  the  right  b'ank  of  the  Mississippi. 
My  team — Jenny,  a  large  dun-colored  mule  that 
had  been  dismissed  by  the  government  ten 
years  previously  on  account  of  old  age  and 
rheumatic  joints,  and  Lame  Jack,  a  big  bay 
draft  horse  that  had  acquired  a  stiff  leg  and 
a  swollen  knee  during  one  of  his  many  win- 
ter campaigns  in  the  northern  pineries — fol- 
lowed slowly  along  behind  my  brother's  load, 
from  which  they  munched  contentedly. 

"Do  you  ever  in  your  dreams  obtain  a  point 
of  vantage  from  which  you  view  yourself  and 
study  your  emotions  and  your  actions  as  if  they 
belonged  to  some  one  else,  preserving  all  the 


192     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

while  that  curious  double  consciousness  that 
makes  you  at  once  the  observed  and  the  ob- 
server? If  so,  you  will  readily  understand  my 
difficulty  in  choosing  between  the  first  and  the 
third  person  whenever  I  speak  of  the  lad  as 
he  sat  on  the  load  of  hay  that  bright  June 
morning. 

"He  has  just  completed  his  sixteenth  year, 
but  his  five  feet,  ten  inches  make  him  look  much 
older.  His  one  hundred  and  sixty-five  pounds 
are  so  well  disposed  in  his  strongly  built  frame 
that  there  is  no  appearance  of  superfluous  flesh. 
Looking  at  him  in  his  loose,  well-worn  brown 
jeans,  as  he  sits  tailor  fashion  on  the  load  of 
hay,  his  head  sunk  between  his  shoulders  and 
his  muscles  lax,  you  will  be  likely  to  underesti- 
mate both  his  height  and  his  weight.  The 
dreamy  brown  eyes  are  overshadowed  by  lux- 
uriant auburn  brows ;  a  broad  forehead  is  par- 
tially revealed  beneath  the  brim  of  a  battered 
straw  hat ;  the  nose  is  large  and  strong,  but 
the  lower  part  of  the  face  gives  an  impression 
of  weakness.  This  impression,  however,  is  not 
due  to  the  chin  which  is  in  reality  large  and 


A  Day-Dream  193 

strong-,  but  to  the  lack  of  muscle  tonus  which 
causes  the  mouth  to  hang  open  habitually  and 
the  lower  lip  to  protrude. 

"As  the  team  reaches  the  top  of  Pilot  Knob, 
an  elevation  of  some  five  hundred  feet  above 
the  river,  the  view  which  greets  the  eye  of 
the  beholder  is  one  of  surpassing  beauty.  On 
every  side  well  tilled  fields,  big  with  the  prom- 
ise of  the  coming  harvest,  stretch  away  over 
the  undulating  ground  to  the  encircling  hori- 
zon. Beneath,  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  river, 
St.  Paul  lies  spread  out  over  a  group  of  low 
hills;  to  the  northwest  the  spires  and  chim- 
neys of  Minneapolis  stand  out  against  the  blue 
of  the  summer  sky ;  to  the  left  you  look  down 
into  the  broad  expanse  of  the  Minnesota  val- 
ley where  for  thirty  miles  the  eye  follows  the 
river  as  it  meanders  between  its  wooded  banks. 
In  the  foreground,  two  hundred  feet  beneath 
you.  Fort  Snelling  crowns  the  high  promon- 
tory that  marks  the  spot  from  which  in  ages 
past  the  Mississippi  leapt  over  the  precipice  into 
the  bed  of  the  Minnesota  three  hundred  feet 
below.  Here  the  two  miVhtv  rivers  still  em- 


194     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

brace  for  a  brief  moment  before  separating,  to 
meet  again  below  the  large  and  densely  wooded 
island  formed  from  the  rock  and  sand  dug 
out  of  the  ancient  river  bed  by  the  Falls  of 
St.  Anthony,  and  blend  in  a  union  that  shall 
know  no  further  parting. 

"But  the  magnificent  lines  of  the  landscape 
and  the  delicate  tints  of  the  wild  rose  by  the 
wayside  are  equally  lost  on  this  boy  who  sits 
dreaming-  on  the  top  of  his  load  of  timothy  in 
the  June  sunshine.  He  is  enveloped  in  a  men- 
tal atmosphere  that  is  alike  impervious  to  the 
ji'vous  song  of  the  bob-o-link  in  his  hedge  of 
hazel  and  briar,  and  to  the  lazy  drone  of  the 
bee  returning  to  his  hive,  laden  with  the  spoils 
of  the  clover  field. 

"Out  of  the  rich  and  fecund  sense  experience 
gained  through  muscle  and  sense  of  touch  in 
the  plowing  and  in  the  seeding,  in  the  meadow 
and  in  the  harvest  field,  lie  is  building  a  mental 
world  of  his  own,  crude  and  undeveloped  if 
you  will,  but  filled  with  the  vigor  of  unmolested 
natural  growth. 

"You  may  revisit  the  scene  at  will.      Pilot 


A  Day-Dream  195 

Knob  still  looks  down  upon  it  from  his  com- 
manding height.  On  a  bright  June  morning 
you  may  still  hear  the  breezes  playing  a  slow 
wedding  march  in  the  surrounding  hills,  while 
the  Minnesota  river,  like  a  fair  young  bride, 
lingers  in  many  a  winding  curve  and  with 
many  a  backward  glance  to  her  peaceful  valley 
home,  kissing  the  weeping  willows  and  mur- 
muring farewells  to  the  rushes,  leaning  caress- 
ingly on  her  sheltering  banks,  as  she  moves 
forward  with  sweet  reluctance  to  join  the  im- 
petuous bridegroom  coming  to  meet  her,  leap- 
ing in  the  cataract  and  foaming  with  impatience 
in  the  rapids. 

"The  Twin  Cities  have  grown  apace ;  but  the 
contour  of  the  landscape  remains  practically  un- 
changed through  the  lapsing  years.  But  of  the 
inner  world  in  which  the  boy  lived,  moved,  and 
had  his  !>emg  on  that  other  June  morning 
twenty  years  ago,  there  is  no  record  save  that 
inscribed  on  the  tablets  of  my  memory." 


CHAPTER  XXII 
A  New  Problem 

"I  have  repeatedly  scrutinized  each  circum- 
stance and  event  of  that  spring  in  the  hope  of 
discovering  the  immediate  antecedents  of  my 
day-dream,  but  always  with  the  same  negative 
result.  I  have  ceased  to  be  surprised  at  this. 
The  thought  has  grown  upon  me  that  we  should 
look  to  a  more  remote  past  for  the  stuff  of 
which  our  dreams  are  made,  even  as  we  go 
back  through  the  long,  bleak  months  of  win- 
ter to  find  the  source  of  the  color  and  fragrance 
of  the  apple  blossoms  in  the  garnered  sun- 
beams of  the  previous  summer. 

"In  those  clays  each  farmer  swore  by  his  own 
reaper  and  discussed  its  points  of  superiority  at 
the  crossroads,  in  the  market  place,  or  around 
the  church  doors  of  a  Sunday  morning.  My 
brothers  were  loyal  to  Wood's  Chain-Rake 
Reaper.  Xo  other  machine  was  so  light  run- 
ning; no  other  dropped  so  neat  a  bundle.  The 


A  New  Problem  197 

agents  of  the  McCormick  or  the  Champion  had 
soon  discovered  that  it  was  useless  to  talk  their 
wares  at  our  place. 

"In  my  eyes  Wood's  Chain-Rake  Reaper 
was  the  embodiment  of  mechanical  perfection. 
It  had  not  occurred  to  me  that  by  taking 
thought  I  might  add  one  cubit  to  its  stature. 
In  fact  an  attempt  on  my  part  to  improve  this 
Paragon  of  Perfection  would  have  seemed  to 
me  presumption  so  colossal  as  to  render  me  a 
fit  subject  for  the  insane  asylum.  And  yet, 
on  that  morning  my  mind  was  obsessed  by 
Wood's  Chain-Rake  Reaper. 

''From  the  time  I  was  a  child  of  seven 
until  my  weight  became  too  great  to  be  added 
to  the  horse's  load,  it  was  my  task  during  each 
harvest  to  drive  the  pair  of  leaders  on  my 
brother's  reaper.  I  rode  bareback  on  the  nigh 
horse,  and  every  time  the  reaper  broke  down, 
and  it  broke  down  pretty  often  in  those  days, 
I  jumped  from  the  horse's  b'ack  and  helped 
Bernard  to  make  repairs.  Sometimes  I  held 
the  sickle-bar  while  he  riveted  on  a  new  sec- 
tion, or  again  I  helped  him  to  replace  a  broken 


198     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

link  in  the  rake-chain ;  at  times  it  was  even 
necessary  for  me  to  crawl  under  the  machine 
and  lie  on  my  back  on  the  ground  so  as  to  hold 
a  bolt  firmly  with  a  big  monkey  wrench  while 
he  unscrewed  its  stubborn  nut. 

"My  ear  soon  came  to  recognize  unerringly 
the  sound  of  a  loose  nut  or  of  a  broken  sickle 
section.  Every  wheel  and  journal,  every  bolt 
and  screw  of  the  machine  reached  my  conscious- 
ness through  ear  and  eye,  through  muscle  and 
sense  of  touch.  In  fact,  during  my  childhood, 
Wood's  Chain-Rake  Reaper  laid  hold  of  all  my 
senses  and  filled  my  imagination.  To  me  it  was 
the  symbol  of  harvest.  It  was  the  heart  of 
those  few  bustling,  anxious  days  on  which 
the  fruitage  of  the  whole  year's  toil  depended, 
and  it  naturally  became  the  center  of  my  con- 
scious life  during  the  silent  years  that  fol- 
lowed, assimilating  the  elements  of  mental  life 
derived  through  all  other  forms  of  sense  ex- 
perience. 

''The  discouragement  resulting  from  my 
failures  to  improve  upon  the  grindstone  pre- 
vented me  from  seeking  to  embody  in  concrete 


A  New  Problem  199 

form  the  mental  life  that  from  day  to  day  was 
growing  in  vigor  and  that  finally  held  my 
imagination  captive  in  the  day-dream. 

"The  habit  of  day-dreaming  into  which  I  had 
fallen  during  my  sixteenth  year  did  not  at  the 
time  seem  to  me  to  have  any  value.  I  was  not 
seeking  to  invent  anything,  nor  did  it  ever  oc- 
cur to  me  to  attribute  to  the  habit  an  educa- 
tive value.  Whenever  present  circumstances 
ceased  to  hold  my  attention  I  simply  could  not 
keep  my  imagination  from  playing  with  the 
various  parts  of  the  machines  with  which  I 
had  grown  familiar. 

"On  the  morning  of  which  I  speak,  I  had 
practically  nothing  to  do  during  the  two  hours 
occupied  by  our  trip  to  town.  I  simply  sat  idle 
in  the  sunshine  on  the  top  of  my  load  of  tim- 
othy and  let  my  horses  follow  my  brother's 
load.  I  did  not  need  to  touch  a  line  until  we 
reached  the  crowded  city  streets. 

"It  is  not  easy,  however,  to  trace  the  imme- 
diate source  of  my  dream  on  that  occasion. 
Several  weeks  of  sunshine  and  of  shower  must 
intervene  before  the  green  fields  of  early  June 


2OO     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

will  be  converted  into  the  golden  harvest.  Nor 
have  I  ever  been  able  to  discover  any  reason 
why  Wood's  Chain-Rake  Reaper  should  have 
dominated  my  day-dream  on  that  particular 
morning;  the  reapers  had  not  been  touched 
since  they  had  been  dismantled  and  backed  into 
their  places  in  the  machine  shed  after  deliver- 
ing to  the  tired  binders  the  last  sheaves  of  the 
preceding  harvest. 

"But  I  remember  distinctly  that,  as  we 
reached  the  top  of  Pilot  Knob',  my  imagination 
was  occupied  in  following  the  motion  of  the 
drive  wheel  through  the  train  of  wheels  and 
spur  gearing  to  the  sprocket  wheel  that  drove 
the  rake.  My  imagination  held  each  wheel  re- 
volving in  its  place  and  traced  each  reversal  ol. 
motion  in  the  gearing  until  it  finally  rested 
satisfied  in  the  picture  of  the  rake  traveling- 
round  the  platform  and  always  in  the  right 
direction. 

"Having  exhausted  this  material,  my  imagi- 
nation busied  itself  for  a  time  in  picturing  the 
relative  velocities  of  the  several  rotating  wheels. 
1  found  this  task  more  difficult  and  the  results 


A  New  Problem  201 

less  satisfactory.  The  sizes  of  the  wheels  were 
such  as  to  involve  the  use  of  fractions ;  so,  after 
a  short  time,  I  turned  my  attention  to  another 
part  of  the  machine  and  confined  my  efforts  to 
an  attempt  to  picture  the  number  of  times  the 
sickle  moved  to  and  fro  to  each  revolution  of 
the  drive  wheel. 

"As  I  did  not  know  how  to  multiply  or  di- 
vide, T  found  no  little  difficulty  in  working  out 
this  problem.  The  pinion  which  mashed  with 
the  drive  wheel  was  about  one-eighth  of  its  size. 
I  imagined  the  circumference  of  the  little  wheel 
spread  out  and  applied  to  the  rim  of  the  larger 
wheel,  and  thus  easily  reached  the  conclusion 
that  the  smaller  wheel  revolved  eight  times 
to  each  revolution  of  the  larger  one.  Keyed  to 
the  shaft  of  the  smaller  wheel  there  was  a  larg'e 
bevel  gear  which  turned  a  pinion  about  one- 
ninth  of  its  own  size.  The  axle  of  this  pinion 
terminated  in  a  crank  shaft  which  drove  the 
sickle.  I  readily  pictured  the  movement  of  each 
of  these  parts  of  the  machine,  but  my  inability 
to  multiply  nine  by  eight  prevented  me  from 
discovering  the  number  of  times  the  crank 


2O2     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

shaft  revolved  to  each  revolution  of  the  drive 
wheel. 

"Baffled  here,  I  began  at  the  other  end  of 
the  problem.  I  saw  in  imagination  each  revo- 
lution of  the  crank  shaft  and  counted  the  revo- 
lutions until  they  resulted  in  one  complete  revo- 
lution of  the  bevel  gear.  Then  I  continued  this 
process,  while  with  the  other  mental  eye,  as  it 
were,  I  watched  the  small  gear  creep  slowly 
around  the  circumference  of  the  drive  wheel, 
until  I  was  able  to  picture  in  imagination  the 
one  hundred  and  forty-lour  strokes  of  the 
sickle  that  corresponded  to  a  single  revolution 
of  the  drive  wheel. 

"The  number  was,  of  course,  only  an  ap- 
proximation, and  in  this  respect  there  was  still 
lacking  something  which  could  be  supplied  only 
by  actual  measurement  or  by  actual  counting 
of  the  teeth  in  the  four  wheels  involved.  But 
this  did  not  prevent  the  element  of  success 
in  my  endeavor  from  diffusing  through  my 
mind  a  glow  of  satisfaction  which  lifted  it  for 
a  b'rief  moment  to  a  higher  plane,  where  it 


A  New  Problem  203 

found  in  an  incident  of  the  previous  harvest 
a  new  problem. 

"I  had  been  binding,  and  had  stepped  aside 
to  let  the  reaper  pass.  The  grade  was  steep 
and  the  horses  were  drawing  the  reaper  down 
the  hill  at  full  speed,  when  a  little  dry  twig 
caught  in  the  sickle  and  locked  the  whole  ma- 
chine. The  drive  wheel  dug  into  the  soft  earth 
and  the  heavy  pole  team  broke  their  double- 
tree. 

"The  picture  of  the  one  hundred  and  forty- 
four  strokes  of  the  sickle  to  each  revolution  of 
the  drive  wheel  brought  this  incident  vividly  to 
mind  and  I  felt  that  in  some  way  velocity  and 
power  were  connected,  though  I  did  not  know 
the  meaning  of  the  words  'velocity'  and  'pow- 
er' at  that  time.  I  wondered  whether  or  not 
it  was  true  that  because  one  round  of  the 
drive  wheel  produced  one  hundred  and  forty- 
four  strokes  of  the  sickle,  one  pound  of  re- 
sistance in  the  sickle  would  hold  out  against 
one  hundred  and  forty-four  pounds  of  power 
in  the  drive  wheel. 

"I  was  unable  to  reach  a  conclusion  as  to 


2O4     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

whether  or  not  this  was  so,  but  I  felt  that  if  it 
was  so,  by  taking  hold  of  the  wrist  of  the 
crank  shaft  I  should  be  able  to  turn  it  with 
ease  while  it  caused  the  machine  to  move  for- 
ward or  backward.  Satisfied  that  this  would 
be  a  crucial  test  of  the  accuracy  of  my  con- 
clusion, I  resolved  to  try  the  experiment  on 
my  return  home.  That  same  evening  I  went 
to  the  machine  shed  and  found,  to  my  great 
delight,  that  by  turning  the  crank-shaft  I  could 
easily  move  the  reaper  forward  or  backward 
on  the  shed  floor." 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

The  Builders  of  Science 

"A  memorandum  left  by  Henry  Cavendish 
shows  that  this  distinguished  chemist,  in  deal- 
ing with  a  volume  of  atmospheric  nitrogen, 
found  in  it  a  small  residuum  that  was  more  in- 
ert than  the  rest  of  the  gas  and  that  did  not 
behave  as  nitrogen  should.  The  science  of 
chemistry  was  not  sufficiently  developed  in  his 
day  to  reveal  to  him  the  meaning  of  the  un- 
usual behavior  of  the  gas  which  remained  in 
his  tube.  He  died  without  having  suspected 
that  this  inert  gas  was  a  hitherto  undiscovered 
element. 

"In  1894.  one  hundred  years  after  this  ex- 
periment, this  same  gas  was  again  isolated  in 
the  tubes  of  a  thoroughly  trained  chemist.  But 
a  century  of  development  in  the  science  of 
chemistry  had  wrought  its  changes  and  enabled 
the  modern  chemist  to  understand  phenomena 
that  were  meaningless  to  Cavendish. 


2o6     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

"Raleigh  had  not  set  out  in  search  of  a  new 
element.  He  was  engaged  in  redetermining 
the  atomic  weight  of  nitrogen,  with  a  view  to 
shedding  light  on  the  so-called  Periodic  Law, 
when  he  found  that  the  atomic  weight  of  the 
nitrogen  obtained  from  the  atmosphere  was 
somewhat  greater  than  that  of  nitrogen  pre- 
pared from  the  nitrates. 

''The  highly  developed  state  of  modern 
chemistry  gave  this  difference  in  atomic 
weights,  which  was  so  slight  that  it  did  not 
appear  until  the  fourth  decimal  place  was 
reached,  a  significance  which  it  could  not  have 
had  for  Cavendish. 

"That  the  atomic  weight  should  be  affected, 
ever  so  little,  by  the  source  from  which  the  ele- 
ment had  been  prepared,  was  so  inconsistent 
with  modern  theory  that  it  led  at  once  to  an  in- 
vestigation in  which  the  fact  was  discovered 
that  the  gas  prepared  from  the  atmosphere,  and 
supposed  to  be  pure  nitrogen,  was  in  reality  a 
mixture  of  nitrogen  with  a  small  percentage  of 
another  very  similar  gas  that  differed  from  ni- 
trogen chiefly  in  its  greater  atomic  weight  and 


The  Builders  of  Science  207 

in  its  greater  inertness.  From  this  latter  quality 
the  newly  discovered  element  derived  its  name. 
argon." 

"Excuse  me,  Doctor,"  said  the  Professor. 
"All  this  about  the  discovery  of  argon  is  doubt- 
less very  interesting  to  chemists ;  but  I  must 
have  been  napping  and  lost  the  connection,  for 
I  can't  see  what  on  earth  it  has  to  do  \vith 
day-dreaming,  or  with  the  reclamation  of  the 
dullard,  unless  you  mean  to  suggest  that  the 
dullard  later  on  became  the  discoverer  of  ar- 
gon. But  argon  was  discovered  in  England, 
wasn't  it?" 

"Ah,  Professor,  your  day  is  coming.  Old 
age  is  creeping  up  your  backbone  as  wrell  as 
mine  and  it  will  one  day  be  leading  you  off 
also  in  these  long,  irrelevant  stretches.  But 
bear  with  my  rambling  for  a  little.  I  am  com- 
ing to  the  point  presently.  I  merely  wanted  to 
call  attention  to  the  fact  that  men  like  your- 
self, who  are  ahead  of  their  time,  accomplish 
little  or  nothing  in  the  building  of  the  science 
which  they  represent.  They  deserve  no  credit. 
Moreover  they  are  not  all  so  prudent  and  mod- 


208    The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

est  as  Cavendish,  and  they  seldom  content 
themselves  with  merely  recording  the  facts  and 
passing  on. 

"The  greatest  enemy  of  human  progress  has 
ever  been  the  man  who  is  too  far  ahead  of  his 
time,  and  who,  craving  notoriety,  prematurely 
announces  discoveries  that  neither  himself  nor 
his  contemporaries  are  prepared  to  incorporate 
into  the  body  of  organized  knowledge.  "When 
these  'martyrs  of  science'  go  forth  and  insist 
upon  the  acceptance  of  newly-made  theories  to 
explain  their  unverified  discoveries,  they  clog 
the  avenues  of  progress. 

"Cavendish  had  argon  in  his  tubes  and  noted 
its  most  characteristic  quality,  inertness,  and 
yet  by  this  discovery  he  added  not  one  iota  to 
the  development  of  chemistry.  Neither  he  nor 
his  contemporary  chemists  were  ready  to  deal 
with  the  facts  in  the  case.  To  Cavendish,  in 
this  instance,  belongs  the  credit  of  the  faithful 
witness  who  simply  records  what  he  does  not 
understand,  and  thus  blazes  the  path  for  those 
who  may  come  after. 

"Men  who  stumble  upon  important  truths  on 


The  I  Guilders  of  Science  209 

the  frontiers  of  a  growing  science  should  be 
given  due  credit  for  these  'accidental  discover- 
ies' if  they  bring  the  truths  in  question  before 
those  who  are  competent  to  deal  with  them,  and 
help  to  incorporate  them  into  the  body  of  ascer- 
tained knowledge.  Every  science  is  in  large 
measure  made  up  of  discoveries  of  this  nature. 

"But  in  the  advance  of  human  knowledge  the 
highest  credit  belongs  only  to  the  man  who 
makes  deliberate  discoveries.  The  accidental 
discovery  brings  increase  of  knowledge,  while 
deliberate  discovery  brings  not  only  increase 
of  knowledge,  but.  what  is  of  much  greater 
value,  it  brings  confirmation  to  the  principles 
and  theories  involved  and  also  brings  to  the 
discoverer  faith  in  his  own  powers. 

"Mere,  Professor,  is  where  we  return  to  the 
dullard.  If  I  have  in  any  measure  succeeded 
in  placing  before  you  the  condition  of  this  boy, 
you  will  readily  understand  that  his  one  su- 
preme need  at  the  time  was  faith  in  his  own 
mental  powers.  He  rejoiced  in  his  physical 
strength,  which,  to  some  extent,  sweetened  life 
for  him  and  rendered  it  endurable. 


2io     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

"It  is  true  that  his  mental  faculties  had  been 
unfolding-  for  two  or  three  years,  but  of  this  he 
had  no  suspicion.  He  had  not  yet  escaped  from 
the  deep  gloom  and  the  discouragement  that 
had  settled  down  over  him  in  consequence  of 
early  failures  and  early  rejections.  He  still 
lived  on  under  the  old  crushing  conviction  that 
he  had  no  brains  and  never  would  have  any. 
And  yet  he  craved  for  some  assurance  of  his 
mental  power,  even  as  the  thirsty  desert  craves 
for  water. 

"When  the  heavy  reaper  moved  over  the  shed 
floor  that  evening  in  response  to  the  touch  of 
his  hand  on  the  crank  shaft,  and  thus  confirmed 
his  day-dream  concerning  the  relation  of  power 
to  motion,  he  slacked  his  thirst  for  the  first 
time  at  the  unfailing  fountain  of  purest  joy  set 
up  by  the  Creator  for  the  exclusive  refreshment 
of  those  who  seek  the  truth  and  find  it." 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

Rediscovering  Fundamental  Truths 

"If  I  were  not  afraid  of  being  mobbed,"  said 
the  Professor,  "I  should  ask  Dr.  Studevan  to 
repeat  his  magic  trick  of  last  Friday  evening. 
Dispensing  with  Aladdin's  lamp  and  the  genii, 
in  the  twinkle  of  an  eye,  he  lifts  a  dullard  to 
a  place  among  the  immortals  beside  Newton 
and  Pasteur. 

"The  boy  is  so  stupid  all  day  that  he  fails 
to  understand  what  is  going  on  about  him  or 
to  appreciate  the  beauty  of  his  surroundings. 
He  hasn't  enough  energy,  even  in  the  morning, 
to  sit  up  straight  and  attend  to  his  team ;  but 
when  he  comes  home  in  the  evening  all  tired 
out,  he  goes  to  the  shed,  turns  a  crank  on  an 
old  machine,  and  presto !  he  is  a  discoverer, 
privileged  to  drink  from  the  fountain  of  re- 
freshment reserved  from  the  foundation  of  the 
world  for  those  who  make  new  conquests  in  the 
realm  of  truth !" 


212     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

"I  thought  you  were  suffering  from  brain- 
fag last  Friday  evening.  Professor.  Or  was  it 
sleep  too  long  delayed  ?  Your  mind  could  not 
have  been  in  its  usual  form  or  you  would  not 
have  so  completely  missed  my  meaning. 

"I  did  not  say,  nor  did  I  wish  to  imply,  that 
the  boy  made  any  contribution  to  physical 
science.  It  is  obvious  that  he  had  a  long  road 
to  travel  before  that  would  have  been  possible 
to  him.  But  he  thought  out  for  himself  the 
relation  of  power  to  weight  in  a  simple  gearing 
and  verified  his  conclusions  by  actual  experi- 
ment. As  far  as  he  was  personally  concerned, 
this  was  an  original  discovery,  and  for  his  men- 
tal life  it  had  all  the  value  of  an  original  dis- 
covery, and  it  yielded  him  all  the  joy  of  one, 
and  this,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the 
truth  in  question  was  regarded  as  elementary 
ages  before  he  was  b'orn. 

"A  study  of  the  causes  that  led  to  the  rise 
and  fall  of  kingdoms  and  of  empires  in  the  past, 
will  make  it  evident  to  any  thoughtful  student 
that  the  great  benefactors  of  the  race  have  not 
been  the  original  discoverers  in  the  fields  of 


Rediscovering-    Fundamental    Truths      213 

science  who  merely  add  the  latest  items  to  the 
sum  of  human  knowledge ;  they  have  ever  been 
the  men  who  cause  each  generation  to  redis- 
cover for  itself  the  great  fundamental  truths 
that  constitute  the  life-blood  of  every  civiliza- 
tion. 

"Xo  one  should  be  more  familiar  with  this 
truth  than  the  Professor.  The  sociologist,  of 
all  men,  should  know  the  tendency  of  each 
generation  to  occupy  itself  with  the  latest  de- 
velopments along  all  lines,  and  to  accept,  with- 
out realizing  their  nature  or  their  value,  the 
truths  and  the  institutions  bequeathed  to  it  by 
preceding  generations.  The  history  of  by-gone 
civilizations  reveals  the  fact  that  in  this  ten- 
dency lie  the  seeds  of  disintegration.  The 
branch  does  not  long  survive  the  neglected  and 
decaying  root. 

"It  has  often  been  said  that  in  mental  life,  as 
in  physical  life,  ontogeny  is  the  recapitulation 
of  phylogeny.  What  history  has  shown  to  be 
true  of  the  rise  and  fall  of  nations,  genetic 
psychology  finds  repeated  in  each  individual 
life.  It  is  this  truth,  perhaps  more  than  any 


214     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

other,  that  justifies  the  individual  laboratory 
method  which  now  obtains  in  all  departments 
of  scientific  instruction. 

"The  pupil  who  is  to  be  formed  for  effective 
work,  either  in  the  fields  of  original  investiga- 
tion or  in  the  provinces  of  applied  science,  must 
not  be  allowed  to  content  himself  with  accept- 
ing the  mere  statement  of  fundamental  scientific 
truths.  He  must  work  out  for  himself  and  ver- 
ify each  great  fundamental  truth  in  his  chosen 
field  of  science.  In  this  way  his  knowledge 
becomes  vital,  his  perceptive  powers  are  quick- 
ened, his  range  of  view  is  broadened,  and  he 
acquires  resourcefulness  in  dealing  with  com- 
plex problems  and  self-reliance  in  the  presence 
of  difficulty. 

"When  an  attempt  is  made  to  lead  the  pupil 
to  the  desired  goal  by  a  more  direct  route  and 
when  mere  instruction  is  substituted  for  indi- 
vidual work,  the  student,  at  the  end  of  his 
course,  finds  himself  in  possession  of  a  set  of 
sterile  formulae  instead  of  being  the  master  of 
a  developed  science. 

"Lest  the  Professor  should  again  misunder- 


Rediscovering   Fundamental    Truths      215 

stand  me,  let  me  emphasize  the  obvious  truth 
that  if  the  pupil  were  denied  all  assistance  and 

left  entirely  to  his  own  resources  all  scientific 
progress  would  be  at  an  end. 

"The  pathway  of  science  is  too  long  and  it  is 
beset  by  too  many  difficulties  to  be  traversed 
alone  by  any  one  individual.  It  would  be  ab- 
surd to  suppose  that  the  efforts  of  a  single  life- 
time would  suffice,  even  for  the  most  highly  en- 
dowed among  the  children  of  men,  to  accom- 
plish a  work  that  is  the  result  of  the  co-opera- 
tion of  countless  generations  of  the  world's 
greatest  thinkers. 

"Libraries,  schools  and  teachers  are  set  apart 
by  society  for  the  express  purpose  of  transmit- 
ting to  each  pupil  the  accumulated  inheritance 
of  his  race.  But  this  does  not  mean  that  the 
pupil  may  set  aside  the  laws  and  the  constitu- 
tion of  his  own  nature  wherein  it  is  written 
that  he  must  pass  through  each  successive  de- 
velopmental phase  before  reaching  the  plane  of 
adult  mental  life. 

"The  agencies  set  apart  by  society  to  aid  the 
pupil  in  his  progress  should  keep  him  from 


216     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

wasting-  his  energies  in  futile  endeavors  and 
from  wandering  in  devious  ways ;  they  slv.  -uld 
place  before  him  in  their  proper  sequence  the 
problems  which  he  must  solve  for  himself: 
they  should  place  within  hi-,  reach  the  means 
by  which  he  may  extricate  himself  from  his 
perplexities.  If  these  agencies  perform  their 
functions  properly,  the  pupil  will,  in  his  few- 
short  years  of  school  life,  cover  ground  that 
wrould  require  centuries  of  unaided  effort. 

"If  this  preachment  has  led  me  too  far  afield, 
you  must  blame  the  Professor  for  it.  At  the 
time  in  my  life  of  which  I  have  been  speaking 
I  had  been  left  practically  to  my  own  resources 
for  a  period  of  about  seven  years.  During 
this  time  I  was  away  from  school ;  the  world 
of  books  was  closed  to  me:  I  had  no  teachers: 
the  people  around  me  were,  in  my  imagination, 
denizens  of  a  higher  world  who  possessed 
brains  and  who  had  had  the  advantages  of  an 
education  and  I  did  not  expect  them  to  under- 
stand my  difficulties  nor  to  engage  in  any  futile 
attempts  to  lift  a  brainless  boy  to  the  mental 
plane  on  which  they  lived. 


Rediscovering   Fundamental    Truths      217 

"Years  were  consumed  in  taking  the  first  few 
steps  on  the  long  road  of  knowledge.  Through 
the  expenditure  of  my  muscular  energy  and 
through  daily  contact  with  the  simple  forms  of 
elementary  machinery  I  had,  however,  suc- 
ceeded in  incorporating  into  my  mental  life  a 
few  of  the  most  rudimentary  concepts  of  phys- 
ical science.  These  were  now  integrating  them- 
selves in  my  day-dreams  as  I  followed  the  plow 
or  drove  my  team  to  market. 

"In  the  day-dream  which  I  related  to 
you  the  other  evening  this  integrating  pro- 
cess had  finally  reached  the  stage  where 
it  moved  me  to  experimental  verification.  The 
success  of  my  experiment  with  the  reaper,  tri- 
vial as  it  may  seem  to  men  like  the  Professor, 
who  have  only  memories  of  a  brilliant  child- 
hood spent  in  school  under  competent  teachers 
to  fall  back  on,  meant  more  to  me  than  they 
can  ever  understand.  It  was  the  first  tangible 
proof  I  had  that  I  was  not  totally  devoid  of 
mental  power  and  it  filled  my  imagination  with 
dreams  of  future  conquests  that  were  destined 
to  tease  me  for  years  to  come  and  that  my  so- 


218     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

called  judgment  condemned  as  the  vain  fancies 
of  a  fool  and  set  aside  lest  their  expression 
should  bring  upon  me  well  merited  ridicule." 


CHAPTER  XXV 

A  Successful  Invention. 

"Day-dreams  such  as  that  of  the  reaper,  fol- 
lowed by  experimental  verification,  were,  how- 
ever, only  the  prelude  or  the  blossoms,  the  fruit 
came  later  in  that  same  summer  in  the  inven- 
tion and  the  building  of  a  grubbing  machine 
that  worked. 

"On  the  bank  of  a  beautiful  little  inland  lake 
that  skirted  the  southern  extremity  of  my  fa- 
ther's farm,  there  once  stood  a  majestic  grove 
of  black  oaks  that  for  more  than  a  century  had 
sheltered  the  wigwam  of  the  Sioux.  In  the 
early  fifties  the  finest  of  these  trees  fell  be- 
fore the  axe  of  the  pioneer,  who  converted 
their  straight  trunks  into  logs  with  which  to 
build  his  hut  or  split  them  into  rails  with  which 
to  enclose  the  first  few  acres  he  had  hewn  from 
the  primeval  forest.  But  the  life  of  these  trees 
was  beyond  the  reach  of  his  axe  in  the  wide- 
spreading  roots  where  it  lay  safely  hidden  from 


22O     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

the  frosts  of  winter.  At  the  first  call  of  spring 
the  tide  of  sap  rose  to  the  surface  and  not 
finding  its  accustomed  channels,  built  for  itself 
around  each  stump  a  clump  of  suckers  whose 
dense  foliage  during  several  subsequent  sea- 
sons afforded  a  secure  nesting-place  for  the 
brown  thrush. 

"At  the  time  of  which  I  speak,  a  quarter  of 
a  century  had  transformed  these  suckers  into 
clusters  of  vigorous  young  oaks  whose  trunks 
had  grown  together  at  the  base  and  whose 
roots  were  intertwined  in  an  inextricable  mass. 

"Under  a  scorching  July  sun,  with  scarcely 
a  breath  of  air  ^tirring,  and  with  a  crew  of  half 
a  dozen  workmen  to  help  me.  1  was  engaged 
in  clearing  this  field  for  the  plow.  The  roots 
of  the  dense  underbrush  of  hazel  and  sumac 
that  had  been  cut  during  the  previous  winter 
formed  a  close  le1t-\vork  in  the  loose  soil 
that  prevented  the  use  of  the  spade  and  made 
diincult  the  work  of  laying  bare  the  roots  of  the 
trees  for  the  axe.  When  the  outer  circle  of 
roots  had  been  removed,  the  task  of  reaching 
the  small  roots  under  the  center  of  the  cluster 


A  Successful  Invention  221 

became  tedious  and  exasperating  and  even 
when  the  last  of  these  roots  had  been  cut,  the 
base  was  so  large  that  the  cluster  retained  its 
erect  position. 

"Under  similar  circumstances  on  a  former 
occasion  I  had  seen  Bernard  make  use  of  a 
team  of  horses  and  a  block  and  tackle  to  bend 
the  clusters  to  one  side  and  thus  facilitate  the 
cutting"  of  the  few  central  roots.  I  was  tempted 
to  resort  to  this  expedient,  whereupon  I  remem- 
bered my  day-dream  about  the  relation  of 
power  to  motion  and  my  experiment  with  the 
reaper.  This  led  me  to  the  conclusion  that  a 
combination  of  the  pulley  and  the  wheel  and 
axle  would  yield  better  results. 

"The  more  I  thought  over  the  matter  and 
the  more  exasperated  I  became  at  the  slowness 
of  our  progress,  the  more  firmly  did  this  idea 
take  possession  <>f  me.  A  heavy  rain  kept  me 
indoors  next  day.  As  soon  as  I  finished  my 
chores  I  went  to  the  shed  and  began  to  dig 
out  discarded  farm  machinery,  in  search  of  the 
wheels  and  shafts  which  I  needed  for  the  con- 
struction of  the  machine  that  I  had  planned 


222     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

while  on  the  grubbing  field  the  previous  day. 

"I  worked  feverishly  all  day,  during  the 
course  of  which  I  was  more  than  once  ques- 
tioned by  the  workmen  and  by  the  members  of 
the  family  as  to  what  I  was  doing.  I  had  only 
one  answer  for  all  such  questions,  'Nothing, 
just  fooling.'  My  previous  failures  had  taught 
me  prudence.  Realizing  the  possibility  of  an- 
other failure  and  shrinking  from  the  ridicule 
which  it  would  be  sure  to  bring  upon  me,  I 
resolved  to  satisfy  myself  that  the  machine 
would  be  a  success  before  telling  any  one  of 
my  plans  or  hopes. 

"Among  the  old  machinery  was  the  body  of 
a  mowing  machine  that  had  been  built  in  Balti- 
more in  1859  and  shipped  to  Mendota  by  way 
of  the  Chesapeake  &  Ohio  canal  and  the  Ohio 
and  Mississippi  Rivers.  The  sickle-bar  had 
been  lost  in  transit  and  had  not  been  replaced 
and,  consequently,  the  machine  had  never  seen 
actual  service.  One  of  the  first  of  its  kind, 
it  was  heavy  and  clumsy  in  construction ;  its 
shafts  and  wheels  had  many  times  the  strength 


A  Successful  Invention  223 

needed  for  mowing,  but  they  just  suited  my 
purpose. 

"I  struggled  for  some  time  in  the  vain  en- 
deavor to  remove  one  of  these  wheels,  but  it 
had  rusted  to  its  shaft  and  defied  my  best  ef- 
forts. When  I  realized  that  I  could  not  dis- 
lodge the  wheel  with  the  tools  at  my  disposal, 
it  dawned  upon  me,  that,  by  slightly  modifying 
my  original  plan,  I  could  alter  the  mowing  ma- 
chine so  as  to  make  it  serve  my  purpose. 

"Before  I  went  to  bed  that  night  I  had  my 
grubbing  machine  well  under  way  and  by  work- 
ing after  supper  into  the  late  hours  of  the 
night  I  had  it  ready  for  trial  inside  of  a  week; 
but  the  test  could  not  be  made  while  others, 
who  would  discover  the  purpose  of  the  ma- 
chine and  be  witnesses  to  a  possible  failure, 
stood  around.  The  following  Sunday  morn- 
ing I  remained  at  home  to  'mind  the  house' 
while  the  rest  of  the  family  went  to  early 
Mass. 

"'The  machine  was  mounted  on  two  wheels, 
and  as  soon  as  I  was  left  alone  I  ran  it  out  of 
!ts  place  in  the  shed  and  anchored  it  to  one  of 


224     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

the  trees  in  the  yard.  With  a  piece  of  new  half- 
inch  rope  I  connected  the  drum  with  a  neigh- 
boring tree  and  began  turning  the  crank.  The 
rope  gradually  tightened  and  almost  before  I 
felt  the  pressure  on  the  handle  it  snapped. 

"A  tide  of  joy  surged  over  me  such  as  only 
those  who  have  lived  through  long  years  of 
discouragement  will  ever  understand.  I  had 
brains  !  I  was  an  Inventor  ! !  The  desire  for 
concealment  was  now  changed  into  a  feverish 
impatience  to  exhibit  the  machine  to  the  fam- 
ily and  the  time  until  they  returned  from 
church  seemed  interminable." 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

A  Family  Wetblankct 

"A  detailed  description  of  this  rather  primi- 
tive grubb'ing  machine  would  hardly  prove  in- 
teresting. As  it  stood  in  the  yard  that  Sun- 
day morning,  while  I  waited  impatiently  for 
the  family's  return,  it  was  simply  a  combina- 
tion of  wheel  and  axle  in  which  the  proportion 
of  power  to  weight  was  as  i  to  2,400.  For- 
tunately for  me,  the  body  of  the  machine  was 
very  strongly  built.  The  shaft  turned  in  brass 
boxes  and  the  wheels  were  held  in  mesh  by  a 
heavy  iron  frame-work.  The  workmanship 
on  the  construction  of  the  mower  was  so  good 
that  there  was  comparatively  little  friction  in 
the  running  gear. 

"In  this  instance,  unlike  that  of  the  reaper, 
my  knowledge  of  the  relation  of  power  to 
weight  was  not  a  mere  approximation  depend- 
ing upon  sense  memory.  1  had  made  actual 
count  of  the  number  of  revolutions  of  the  crank 


226     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

required  to  cause  the  main  axle  to  revolve  once, 
and  this  axle,  or  drum,  for  as  such  I  used  it, 
was  two  inches  in  diameter,  whereas  the  diame- 
ter of  the  circle  traversed  by  the  crank  was 
thirty-six  inches.  I  was  well  aware,  therefore, 
that  every  pound  of  power  applied  to  the  han- 
dle was  transformed  into  something  more  than 
a  ton  by  the  time  it  reached  the  rope.  I  knew 
that  the  2,400  pounds  would  be  reduced  some- 
what by  friction,  but  the  extent  of  this  reduc- 
tion was  utterly  b'eyond  my  power  to  calcu- 
late. 

"I  believed  that  as  soon  as  I  could  convince 
my  brother  of  the  value  of  the  machine  I  could 
get  such  improvements  for  it  as  I  desired.  I 
had  counted  on  using  four  pulley  blocks,  which 
I  knew  would  change  the  relation  of  power  to 
weight  from  i  to  2.400  to  i  to  384,000.  This 
would,  of  course,  be  somewhat  diminished  by 
friction.  Moreover,  I  could  at  this  time  lift 
five  hundred  pounds  and  I  calculated  that  I 
could  easily  enough  apply  at  least  half  of  this 
to  the  crank,  the  handle  of  which  I  had  made 
long  enough  and  strong  enough  to  allow  two 


A  Family  Wetblanket  227 

men  to  exert  their  combined  strength  in  turn- 
ing. 

"It  is  a  simple  matter  to  multiply  384,000  by 
500  and  thus  reach  the  conclusion  that  two 
men  could  exert  a  pressure  of  192,000,000 
pounds  on  the  tree  which  it  was  desired  to  pull 
out  by  the  roots.  But  the  multiplication  table 
was  still  an  impenetrable  mystery  to  me  and  I 
simply  knew  that  two  men  on  the  crank  would 
be  able  to  exert  a  tremendous  pressure  on  the 
clusters  of  young  trees  that  had  been  annoying 
and  baffling  me  during  the  previous  week. 

"My  imagination  was  on  fire  with  all  this 
and  with  the  wonderful  things  that  the  grub- 
bing machine  would  surely  accomplish.  I 
thought  of  the  forests  that  were  still  to  be 
grubbed  and  feared  that  they  were  not  exten- 
sive enough,  and  of  the  patents  that  were  to  be 
taken  out,  and  of  the  money  that  \vas  to  be 
made,  and  I  am  afraid  that  before  the  hour  had 
drawn  to  a  close  I  was  a  millionaire  in  imagi- 
nation. In  the  midst  of  it  all,  the  thought 
kept  continually  obtruding  itself  that  whatever 
my  shortcomings  in  other  respects,  and  prob- 


228     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

ably  I  judged  myself  at  this  time  more  severely 
than  others  did,  there  was  at  least  one  thing 
for  which  I  had  brains,  and  a  glorious  career  as 
a  machinist  and  an  inventor  seemed  to  stretch 
out  before  me. 

"At  last  the  family  arrived.  The  carriage 
stopped  just  in  front  of  my  machine.  I  was 
standing  with  my  hand  on  the  crank,  with  my 
heart  ready  to  burst  with  joy,  not  to  mention 
the  condition  of  my  head,  but  to  my  surprise 
and  disappointment  not  one  member  of  the 
family  would  bestow  even  a  single  glance  on 
me  or  on  my  machine.  As  Joe  threw  the  lines 
over  the  dashboard  and  stepped  from  the  car- 
riage I  tried  to  tell  him  about  my  wonderful 
invention,  but  I  was  chilled  by  the  reception 
which  the  others  gave  me,  and  the  unsympa- 
thetic look  on  his  face  caused  the  words  to 
stick  in  my  throat,  as  he  turned  towards  the 
house  with  the  peremptory  order,  'Ed,  put  up 
the  K-am  ri<jht  awav.' 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

The  First  Triumph 

"The  next  morning  I  hitched  the  grubbing 
machine  behind  the  wagon,  intending  to  take 
it  with  me  to  the  grubbing  field,  which  was  at 
the  other  end  of  the  farm,  but  Joe  appeared 
on  the  scene  and  forbade  the  procedure.  I  re- 
member his  words  still ;  they  hurt  and  angered 
me  more  than  anything  he  had  ever  said  to  me. 
'Unhitch  that  thing  and  leave  it  here,  and  quit 
wasting  the  men's  time  with  your  fool  ma- 
chines.' In  my  experience,  no  one  had  ever 
questioned  Joe's  authority;  his  word  was  law 
on  the  farm.  So,  with  a  heavy  heart  and  a  re- 
bellious will.  I  unhitched  my  grubbing  ma- 
chine and  went  back  to  dig  out  the  clusters  of 
young  oaks  without  its  aid. 

"At  noon,  however,  I  found  that  Joe  had 
gone  to  town,  so  I  again  hitched  the  machine 
behind  the  wagon.  Whatever  the  consequences 


230     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

might  be,  I  was  determined  to  see  the  thing 
through  and  to  give  my  machine  a  fair  trial. 

"My  father  was  going  to  Bernard's  house 
and  he  rode  with  me  as  far  as  the  grubbing 
field.  He  scolded  me  all  the  way  for  my  dis- 
obedience to  Joe,  but  he  did  not  himself  forbid 
me  to  take  the  machine  to  the  field.  \Yhen  we 
reached  the  grove  I  wanted  him  to  wait  to  see 
the  machine  work,  but  this  he  positively  refused 
to  do. 

"I  at  once  proceeded  to  anchor  the  grubbing 
machine  to  a  stump  and  to  attach  the  pulley  to 
a  cluster  of  oaks  that  I  had  partially  grubbed 
out  in  the  forenoon.  To  my  great  joy,  it  came 
out  without  difficulty,  and  all  my  dreams  re- 
turned to  me  in  spite  of  the  family  wetblanket. 
In  pulling  the  second  cluster,  however,  I  broke 
the  chain  ;  my  chief  difficulty  now  was  to  get 
anything  strong  enough  to  hold  me.  I  had 
brought  along  all  the  chains  I  could  find  about 
the  place.  After  my  experiment  the  day  be- 
fore, I  knew  that  a  half-inch  rope  was  practi- 
cally worthless  and  there  was  no  stronger  rope 
available.  The  log-chains  were  clumsv  and  not 


The   First   Triumph  231 

what  I  wanted,  but,  tinder  the  circumstances, 
they  were  the  best  I  could  get.  In  the  follow- 
ing two  hours  I  think  I  must  have  broken  the 
chain  half  a  dozen  times.  I  had  learned  to 
measure  neither  my  power  nor  the  strength  of 
the  chains. 

"About  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  my 
brother's  hired  boy  happened  along,  apparently 
by  chance,  but  he  told  me,  sub  rosa}  that  my 
father  had  sent  him  down  to  see  whether  the 
machine  was  working  or  not,  and  had  cau- 
tioned him  not  to  tell  me  that  he  was  sent.  We 
had  results  to  show  him  that  made  his  eyes 
bulge.  He  told  me  that  there  was  a  coil  of 
new  inch-rope  in  Bernard's  barn,  which  my 
brother  intended  to  use  in  digging  a  well,  and 
he  volunteered  to  bring  it  to  me.  Half  an 
hour  later  he  returned  with  the  rope,  and  with 
him  was  my  father,  who  watched  the  opera- 
tion of  the  grubbing  machine  with  unfeigned 
delight. 

"When  we  reached  home  that  evening,  Joe 
was  eating  his  dinner.  He  had  just  learned 
of  mv  disobedience,  and,  for  the  first  time  in 


232     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

my  memory,  he  seemed  genuinely  angry.  And 
notwithstanding  the  fact  that  there  were 
strangers  in  the  dining  room  when  I  entered, 
he  turned  sharply  on  me  and  reprimanded  me 
for  disobeying  orders. 

"But  father  stopped  him  saying,  'Never  mind, 
Joe,  Ed  did  more  work  this  afternoon  with  his 
grubbing  machine  than  the  crew  could  do  in  a 
week  without  it.  You  had  better  hitch  up  in 
the  morning  and  go  to  town  and  get  him  every- 
thing he  wants  for  it.' 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

The  Parting  of  the  Ways 

"Did  you  make  anything  on  your  patent, 
Doctor,  or  did  you  let  some  one  cheat  you  out 
of  it  as  is  usual  in  such  cases?"  asked  Mr. 
Eaton. 

"No,  I  never  took  out  a  patent  on  the  grub- 
bing machine.  If  I  had  had  the  money  at  the 
time  I  would  undoubtedly  have  applied  for 
a  patent.  But  Joe,  who  held  the  key  to  the 
family  exchequer,  did  not  see  the  thing  in  that 
light.  His  good  judgment  in  this  matter  prob- 
ably saved  me  from  a  mistake  which  would 
have  changed  the  whole  current  of  my  life. 
He  was  well  informed  on  such  matters  and 
knew  that  only  a  small  percentage  of  the  in- 
ventions that  are  patented  ever  pay  the  expense 
involved. 

"The  grubbing  machine  did  good  service 
during  the  following  two  or  three  years  in 
clearing  my  father's  farm.  But  apart  from  the 


234     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

saving  of  time  and  labor  involved  in  this  it 
never  brought  me  a  cent.  Its  value,  as  I  look 
at  it  now,  was  not  to  be  measured  by  the  dol- 
lar standard,  nor  did  the  machine  contain  any 
important  addition  to  the  science  of  mechanics. 
Its  value  was  almost  wholly  personal  and  chiefly 
subjective. 

"The  construction  and  the  successful  opera- 
tion of  this  machine,  however,  had  many  far- 
reaching  effects  on  the  development  of  my  mind 
and  character.  Some  of  the  incidents  connected 
with  this  are  worthy  of  more  than  a  passing 
glance  from  those  who  are  interested  in  the 
problems  of  mental  development. 

"My  revolt  against  my  brother's  authority, 
for  instance,  trivial  as  it  must  have  seemed  to 
my  family,  or  to  the  casual  onlooker,  was  in 
reality  the  turning  point  in  the  formation  of 
my  character.  The  child  naturally  obeys  the 
individual.  But  when  he  becomes  a  man  he 
must  put  away  the  things  of  a  child.  He  be- 
gins to  be  a  man  in  that  hour  wherein  he 
learns  to  transfer  his  allegiance  from  individu- 
als to  principles  and  when  that  hour  comes  he 


The  Parting  of  the  Ways  235 

must  make  the  transition  or  a  second  oppor- 
tunity will,  in  all  human  probability,  never  be 
offered  and  he  will  remain  during  the  rest 
of  his  natural  life  a  mere  tool  or  chattel  in 
the  hands  of  others. 

"Strength  and  stubbornness,  on  account  of 
their  superficial  resemblances,  are  often  con- 
founded, and  yet  they  are  in  reality  separated 
from  each  other  by  polar  distances.  Strength 
of  character  is  measured  by  its  unswerving 
loyalty  to  truth  and  to  the  principles  of  justice 
as  these  are  revealed  in  the  individual  con- 
sciousness. Stubbornness,  on  the  contrary,  fol- 
lows neither  truth  nor  principle  nor  justice;  it 
is  animated  solely  by  egotism  and  vanity.  The 
persistence  which  the  stubborn  manifest  in 
pursuing  a  course  of  action  that  they  have  once 
entered  upon  is  not  relieved  by  insight  or 
imagination  :  it  is  not  guided  by  reason  or  prin- 
ciple; it  partakes  of  the  nature  of  that  blind 
momentum  that  is  found  in  masses  of  moving 
matter. 

"It  is  needless  to  say  that  I  did  not  indulge 
in  anv  character  analysis  at  the  time.  In  this 


236     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

I  was  not  unlike  other  boys  who  come  to  the 
parting  of  the  ways  that  lead  either  to  free- 
dom or  to  slavery.  The  decision  must  be  made, 
in  large  measure,  on  the  basis  of  instinct  and  of 
trivial  circumstances,  and  without  the  aid  of 
that  larger  discourse  of  reason  that  enables 
the  mature  mind  to  look  before  and  after.  I 
had  no  realization  of  the  consequences.  It  did 
not  occur  to  me  in  my  revolt  against  my 
brother's  authority  that  I  had  come  to  the 
'parting  of  the  ways  and  had  already  taken  the 
most  important  step  that  I  would  ever  be  called 
upon  to  take.  But  the  effect  of  this  revolt  on 
my  consciousness  was  none  the  less  permanent 
and  far-reaching  on  that  account.  In  fact,  the 
law  underlying  the  transition  from  obedience 
to  individuals  to  obedience  to  principles  was 
implanted  in  my  consciousness  on  this  occasion 
under  conditions  such  as  gave  to  it  an  imme- 
diate and  vigorous  development. 

"The  thought  of  the  grubbing  machine  had 
been  born  of  my  necessity  under  the  broiling 
July  sun  and  of  my  day-dreams  during  several 
preceding  years,  and  when  I  tested  the  machine 


The  Parting  of  the  Ways  237 

on  that  Sunday  morning,  and  when  the  rope 
snapped  at  the  touch  of  my  hand,  theory 
glowed  to  incandescence  and  burned  the  truth 
in  question  into  the  depths  of  my  conscious- 
ness. 

"There  was  left  in  my  mind  no  shadow  of 
doubt  that  the  machine  would  do  the  thing  that 
was  needed  to  be  done  on  the  grubbing  field, 
and  consequently  there  was  no  doubt  in  my 
mind  that  it  meant  the  saving  of  time  and 
money  to  the  family  as  well  as  triumph  to  me. 
These  convictions  were  formed  and  crystallized 
in  a  mind  that  was  glowing  with  emotions  of 
many  kinds.  Triumph  had  at  last  succeeded 
repeated  failures ;  self-reliance  had  taken  the 
place  of  vacillating  uncertainty;  the  conscious- 
ness of  mental  power  replaced  the  abiding  con- 
viction of  my  own  stupidity. 

"The  indifference  of  my  family,  disappoint- 
ing as  it  was,  and  the  contempt  for  me  involved 
in  my  brother's  order,  however  they  may  have 
chilled  me,  were  powerless  to  efface  the  convic- 
tion that  had  grown  up  in  my  consciousness. 
Besides,  it  was  I  who  was  doing  the  grubbing 


238     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

and  not  my  brother,  and  in  his  order  I  saw 
only  harshness  and  injustice  for  he  condemned 
the  machine  without  taking  the  trouble  to 
look  into  its  merits. 

"Of  course  I  can  now  see  the  reasonableness 
of  my  brother's  course  of  action.  There  was  so 
little  to  be  hoped  for  from  the  omadhaun,  and 
there  was  such  a  small  chance  of  his  invent- 
ing and  building  a  machine  that  would  work, 
that  common  sense  would  prevent  one  from 
looking  into  it.  I  have,  myself,  taken  a  simi- 
lar attitude  many  times  since  under  like  cir- 
cumstances. But  on  that  morning  I  could  see 
only  my  side  of  the  question.  My  brother's 
action  in  the  matter  appeared  to  me  as  the  ac- 
tion of  a  tyrant,  and  it  stung  me  to  my  first 
act  of  open  rebellion  against  his  authority. 

"After  all.  success  measures  the  distance  be- 
tween treason  and  patriotism.  Be  sure  that 
you  are  right  and  then  go  ahead  is  good  ad- 
vice. Retreat  is  difficult  and  dangerous  at 
best ;  in  most  cases  it  is  fatal.  Nerve  currents 
never  double  back  on  themselves.  All  nerve 
currents  emerge  ultimately  on  the  motor  side 


The  Parting  of  the  Ways  239 

of  life.     'He  that  putteth  his  hand  to  the  plow 
and  looketh  back  is  not  worthy  of  me.' 

"I  remember  that  I  was  very  deeply  im- 
pressed some  years  after  the  time  of  which  I 
speak  by  a  description  of  a  thrilling-  scene  at 
the  >s"atural  Bridge  in  Virginia  which  I  found 
in  one  of  the  school  Readers.  The  ambitious 
boy,  in  his  desire  to  inscribe  his  name  higher 
than  that  of  any  other  that  adorned  or  disfig- 
ured the  sandstone  cliff,  dug  a  niche  for  his 
foot  and  another  for  his  left  hand  and  thus 
lifted  himself  a  foot  or  two  at  a  time  until  he 
had  carved  his  name  above  all  the  others  on 
the  mighty  wall.  But  not  satisfied  with  this 
he  cut  and  carved  again  and  again  until  he  had 
attained  a  height  from  which  there  was  no 
possible  return ;  his  only  safety  lay  in  reach- 
ing the  top.  With  bated  breath  and  agonized 
prayer  his  friends  below  watched  his  slow 
progress  upward  as  with  despairing  energy  he 
cut  niche  after  niche  in  the  flinty  limestone 
until  his  knife,  worn  to  the  haft,  dropped  from 
his  nerveless  hand.  But  he  had  cut  his  way  out 
from  under  the  overhanging  arch  to  a  point 


240     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

where  he  could  be  seen  by  those  watching  from 
the  bridge  above,  and  as  one  tired  foot  slipped 
from  its  niche  a  rope  was  dropped  over  his 
shoulders  and  he  was  drawn  up  to  safety. 

"This,  after  all,  is  a  true  picture  of  life. 
'Nothing  succeeds  like  success.'  The  child  is 
governed  by  the  immediacy  of  the  pleasure-pain 
reaction.  This  is  true  also  of  the  animal ;  but 
man  must  rise  superior  to  this  and  the  vision 
of  ultimate  good  must  give  him  strength  and 
endurance  to  bear  present  pain  and  to  over- 
come all  obstacles  in  its  achievement  or  die  in 
the  attempt.  And  it  is  important  that  this 
lesson  be  learned  once  for  all  on  the  very  day 
on  which  the  boy,  by  transferring  his  allegiance 
from  men  to  principles,  ceases  to  be  a  boy  and 
becomes  a  man. 

"Had  my  grubbing  machine  failed  me  on 
that  day,  my  brother's  rebuke  in  the  evening 
would  have  crushed  me  utterly;  and  in  all  hu- 
man probability  I  should  never  again  have 
followed  my  conviction  when  it  led  me  beyond 
the  narrow  pathway  of  the  letter  of  the  law. 
The  very  glow  of  emotion  and  all  the  pent-up 


The  Parting  of  the  Ways  241 

feelings  that  went  into  that  revolt  against  my 
brother's  authority  and  into  the  trial  of  the 
machine  would  have  burned  failure  into  my 
consciousness  so  as  to  determine  the  course  of 
subsequent  events  as  certainly  as  the  success  of 
the  enterprise  actually  determined  their  course 
in  the  opposition  direction." 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

Illusions 

"I  now  know  that  the  success  of  the  grub- 
bing machine  was  a  pure  accident.  Had  I 
carried  out  my  original  plan,  it  would  have 
failed  utterly,  and  this  for  the  same  reason 
that  the  grindstone  experiments  failed.  I  had 
planned  on  using  for  the  grubbing  machine  a 
wooden  frame  on  which  I  intended  to  bolt 
boxes.  Had  I  carried  out  this  intention  the 
wheels  would  have  pushed  away  from  each 
other  as  soon  as  the  strain  came  upon  them.  Of 
course  a  wooden  frame  could  have  been  so 
constructed  as  to  hold  a  double-back-gearing  in 
proper  alignment,  even  under  very  heavy  pres- 
sure, but  at  that  time  I  was  wholly  innocent  of 
the  principles  of  mechanical  construction  in- 
volved in  such  machines. 

"So  I  really  owed  the  success  of  my  grub- 
bing machine  to  the  fact  that  I  was  unable  to 
dislodge  a  few  rusty  wheels  from  their  shafts, 


Illusions  243 

and  was  in  consequence  led  to  accept  as  the 
basis  of  my  machine  an  iron  framework  that, 
although  built  for  entirely  different  purposes, 
had  sufficient  strength  to  support  the  strain 
that  was  put  upon  it  in  the  grubbing  machine. 
I  did  not,  however,  advert  to  this  circumstance 
at  the  time  and  took  to  myself  the  full  credit 
for  the  successful  working  of  the  machine." 

"Doctor,  didn't  this  invention  of  yours  make 
your  mother  very  proud  and  happy,"  asked 
Mrs.  O'Brien. 

"Yes,  I  suppose  it  did  for  the  moment,  but 
at  this  late  date  I  have  no  way  of  ascertaining 
just  what  effect  the  incident  had  on  the  vari- 
ous members  of  my  family.  Of  course,  after 
father's  announcement  of  the  success  of  the 
machine  I  was  asked  to  explain  its  working  and 
to  state  what  further  improvements  I  needed. 
But  1  hardly  think  you  can  form  an  estimate 
of  how  impossible  it  was  for  me  to  put  my 
thoughts  into  words.  At  that  time  it  was  far 
easier  for  me  to  handle  an  axe  or  a  grub  hoe 
than  to  use  my  mother-tongue.  For  years  I 
had  remained  silent,  speaking  only  when  it  wras 


244     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

absolutely  necessary;  and  what  little  power  of 
speech  I  was  possessed  of  under  ordinary  cir- 
cumstances deserted  me  now  in  my  excite- 
ment. 

"I  have  sometimes  wondered  why  the  pea- 
cock struts  and  exhibits  his  gorgeous  plumage. 
What  benefit  does  he  derive  from  the  practice 
apart  from  the  exercise  involved?  And  yet 
his  strutting'  is  an  instinct  that  has  been  formed 
under  the  pressure  of  untold  ages  in  the  strug- 
gle for  existence  and  it  must  be  possessed  of 
some  real  value  to  the  race.  Is  it  a  similar  law, 
I  wonder,  that  makes  each  one  of  us  strut  at 
some  time  or  other  in  our  lives? 

"I  do  not  b'elieve  that  I  had  an  opportunity, 
perhaps  I  did  not  even  have  the  desire,  to  strut 
when  I  was  a  child  and  now  when  I  was  six- 
teen years  old  all  the  pent-up  struts  that  my  in- 
fancy should  have  known  suddenly  rose  up 
within  me  and  in  their  frantic  efforts  to  ex- 
hibit themselves  simultaneously  left  me  para- 
lyzed and  devoid  of  speech. 

"I  had  grown  morbidly  self-conscious  during 
the  years  of  my  discouragement,  and  now  in 


Illusions  245 

the  moment  of  exaltation  I  became  still  more 
self-conscious.  To  me  the  grubbing  machine 
seemed  to  fill  the  whole  heavens.  I  could  not 
understand  how  any  one  who  knew  of  it  could 
think  of  anything  else.  It  was  so  full  of  in- 
definite possibilities  that  I  feared  some  one 
who  saw  it  working  would  anticipate  me  at  the 
Patent  Office  and  rob  me  of  the  just  fruits  of 
my  discovery. 

"It  was  but  natural  that  I  should  interpret 
the  impression  made  upon  the  members  of  my 
family  and  upon  others  who  saw  the  machine 
work  by  my  own  wildly  exaggerated  notions 
of  its  importance.  As  I  look  back  at  the  oc- 
currence, F  realize,  of  course,  that  the  impres- 
sion actually  made  upon  those  around  me  was 
not  at  all  in  keeping  with  what  I  then  supposed 
it  to  be. 

"That  my  family  were  surprised  and  pleased 
at  the  originality  and  initiative  displayed  by  the 
omadhaun  there  can  be  no  doub't,  but  for  all 
that,  my  grubbing  machine  could  not  have 
gone  far  towards  changing  their  estimate  of 
me.  As  far  as  I  know  it  did  not  even  awaken 


246     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

in  them  the  buried  hope  of  giving  me  an  ele- 
mentary knowledge  of  the  three  R's. 

"This  state  of  affairs  must  not  be  thought 
strange.  The  invention  objectively  considered 
was  trivial  to  a  degree,  and  it  could  hardly 
be  expected  that  any  of  those  around  me  would 
understand  its  subjective  value.  And,  after 
all,  are  not  the  subjective  values  the  real  val- 
ues ?  It  would  be  hard  to  overestimate  the 
value  of  this  poor  grubbing  machine  to  my 
mental  life,  and  it  is  just  as  well  to  remember 
that  this  value  was  due  almost  wholly  to  the 
fictitious  importance  which  I  attached  to  it.  I 
can  never  be  sufficiently  grateful  to  Providence 
that  in  those  days  there  were  none  of  those 
well-meaning  fools  at  hand  to  enlighten  me 
concerning  the  real  value  of  my  invention.  Had 
I  been  able  to  see  the  naked  truth  it  would 
have  shattered  my  bubble  of  conceit  and  left 
me  in  the  slough  of  despond. 

"Mud  pies,  houses  of  cards,  doll  houses,  pop- 
guns, and  kites  are  to  us  grown-ups  trivial 
matters,  but  they  are  often  filled  with  tragic 
importance  t<j  the  child.  Perhaps,  some  day, 


Illusions  247 

when  we  view  all  things  in  the  unchanging 
light  of  eternity,  our  adult  hopes  and  large  am- 
bitions, our  latest  discoveries,  our  railroads, 
canals,  and  games  of  empire  will  seem  as  trivial 
in  their  objective  importance  as  do  those  games 
of  childhood  and  we  shall  come  to  understand 
that  the  only  real  importance  of  achievement 
is  the  subjective  importance. 

"My  family  had  the  good  sense  not  to  un- 
dertake to  disillusionize  me.  They  had  a  word 
of  praise  for  the  machine  whenever  it  was 
mentioned  and  they  exercised  a  quiet  but  firm 
restraint  whenever  I  spoke  of  taking  out  a  pat- 
ent. It  is  true,  however,  that  I  did  not  trouble 
them  much  with  my  dreams  and  ambitions.  I 
was  not  communicative  and  I  seldom  ventured 
to  speak  of  these  matters  to  any  one.  This 
silence  was  a  blessing  for  it  saved  me  from  the 
ridicule  that  would  undoubtedly  have  been  be- 
stowed upon  me  had  the  content  of  my  mind 
b'een  expressed  in  words. 

"One  of  the  best  fruits  of  my  silence,  per- 
haps, was  the  fact  that  my  illusion  was  allowed 
to  run  its  natural  course.  I  hardly  dare  say 


248     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

it,  but  it  has  seemed  to  me  many  times  that 
illusions  are  our  salvation.  I  feel  sure  that  it 
was  so  in  my  case  at  least.  The  truth  would 
have  left  me  paralyzed  and  in  a  slough  of  de- 
spond to  the  end  of  my  days.  It  was  the  bright, 
flashing  illusion,  a  mere  rainbow  of  ambition, 
that  led  me  up  out  of  the  valley  of  darkness 
and  discouragement. 

"Of  course  the  illusion  could  not  have  lasted 
long  under  any  circumstance ;  it  is  notorious 
that  we  can  not  long  continue  to  believe  in 
visions  of  this  sort  without  tangible  assets, 
but  in  my  case  the  disillusionment  came  grad- 
ually, and  each  stage  of  it  was  produced  by 
some  achievement  or  by  the  attainment  of  some 
truth  that  was  of  permanent  value  to  me.  so 
that  by  the  time  I  had  grown  out  of  my  illu- 
sion concerning  the  importance  of  the  grub- 
bing machine  I  had  learned  to  form  a  juster  es- 
timate of  my  own  powers  and  the  germ  of  hope 
had  begun  to  set  its  roots  deep  in  my  nature.'' 


CHAPTER  XXX 

Transitory  Phases 

"Doctor,"  said  Miss  Russell,  "your  para- 
doxes last  Friday  evening"  proved  too  much 
for  me.  I  did  not  object  at  the  time  because  I 
felt  sure  that  you  could  not  have  meant  what 
you  seemed  to  say,  but  the  more  I  have  thought 
about  the  matter  the  more  puzzled  I  have  be- 
come. Did  I  understand  you  to  say  that  error 
and  illusion  saved  you  where  the  truth  would 
have  left  you  crushed  and  paralyzed  ?  Do  you 
mean  that  error  and  illusion  are  ever  good  ? 
that  they  are  ever  better  than  the  truth  for  a 
sane  mind  ? 

"Our  work  in  school  is  made  up  largely  of 
efforts  to  eradicate  error  and  dispel  illusions 
from  the  minds  of  the  children.  You  surely  do 
not  disagree  with  this  policy?  You  would  not 
have  the  children  grow  up  in  error  and  illu- 
sion?" 

"My  dear  Miss  Russell,  you  are  not  the  first 


250     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

one  who  has  found  it  difficult  to  unravel  that 
riddle.  But  it  is  well  to  remember  at  the  out- 
set that  the  God  of  truth  ordained  that  we 
should  give  milk  to  babes  and  meat  to  men, 
and  that  even  at  the  last  He  said  to  His  apos- 
tles, 'I  have  many  things  to  say  to  you,  but  you 
cannot  bear  them  now.'  What  do  you  think 
He  meant  by  the  parable  in  which  the  servants 
come  to  the  master  filled  with  indignation  on 
having  found  cockle  growing  up  with  the 
wheat,  and  anxious  for  permission  to  pull  it 
up;  but  the  Master  said,  'Let  it  be  until  the 
harvest,  lest  in  pulling  up  the  cockle  you  should 
pull  up  the  wheat  with  it.' 

"There  is  no  real  disagreement  between  us. 
Truth  is  life  and  freedom  to  the  mind;  the 
only  question  is  how  we  shall  attain  it.  Have 
you  not  heard  the  old  story  of  the  two  men 
who  built  a  shanty,  and  having  nailed  on  the 
last  board  from  the  inside,  one  said,  'Let  us 
cut  a  hole  to  let  the  dark  out,'  and  the  other 
replied,  'No,  but  let  us  cut  a  hole  to  let  the 
light  in.' 

"The  salvation  of  the  child  must  ultimately 


Transitory   Phases  251 

come  from  the  truth ;  but  the  question  is,  how 
shall  he  attain  the  truth  ?  It's  a  graceless  task 
to  go  about  plucking  error  and  illusion  from 
the  child's  mind.  The  human  mind  grows  in 
knowledge  under  the  law  of  development 
wherein  it  is  written  that  each  subsequent  phase 
shall  be  attained  through  the  reconstruction  of 
the  previous  phase.  In  the  human  mind  you 
cannot  build  with  the  naked  truth ;  the  mind 
cannot  look  upon  it  and  live.  The  child  needs 
his  fairy  stories  and  Santa  Clans  and  his  child- 
ish settings  for  all  manner  of  truths. 

''The  crayfish  can  grow  only  by  casting  off 
its  shell  from  time  to  time,  but  if,  in  your  mis- 
taken zeal  to  help  it  in  its  growth,  you  pro- 
ceed to  tear  off  the  shell,  you  will  kill  it  instead 
of  helping  it. 

"Error  and  illusion,  after  all,  are  but  the 
natural  limitations  of  the  mind's  growth; 
they  drop  away  as  naturally  and  as  inevitably 
before  the  light  of  growing  truth  as  do  the 
shadows  before  the  rising  sun. 

"It  is  quite  true  that,  looked  at  in  one  way, 
the  teacher's  duty  may  be  said  to  consist,  in 


252     The  Making-  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

large  measure,  in  the  correcting  of  the  pupils' 
mistakes  and  in  the  dispelling  of  their  illu- 
sions, but  it  does  not  follow,  on  this  account, 
that  the  teacher  is  to  play  iconoclast  and  spend 
his  time  in  endeavoring  to  make  young  children 
see  the  truth  through  adult  eyes.  The  teacher 
should  correct  the  children's  errors  by  putting 
something  better  in  their  place  in  the  minds  of 
the  children,  something  truer,  something  more 
beautiful.  This  will  help  to  lift  them  into  a 
larger  and  purer  mental  life. 

"If  I  had  time  to  go  into  details  in  my  own 
story,  I  might  easily  point  out  to  you  the 
working  of  this  principle.  If  on  the  evening 
of  my  first  success  with  the  grubbing  ma- 
chine, some  one  had  made  me  realize  its  paltri- 
ness and  shown  me  what  little  significance  it 
had  for  the  world  at  large,  I  would  have  been 
crushed  and  would  have  had  nothing  to  fall 
back  on.  But  as  it  happened,  I  was  allowed 
to  dream  dreams  that  night  of  my  wonderful 
achievement,  and  the  next  day  my  brother  took 
me  to  town  with  him  to  purchase  the  needed 
improvements,  having  found  it  impossible  to 


Transitory  Phases.  253 

obtain  from  me  a  sufficiently  accurate  descrip- 
tion of  what  I  needed. 

"We  visited  the  largest  foundry  and  machine 
shop  in  the  city,  and  there,  with  wonder  and 
delight,  T  saw  for  the  first  time  lathes,  and 
drills,  and  planing  machines,  operating  with 
quiet,  irresistible  strength,  and  with  what 
seemed  to  me  to  be  almost  human  intelligence. 

"When  I  returned  home  that  night  my  grub- 
bing machine  had,  somehow,  shrunk  many 
sizes ;  nevertheless,  there  was  no  grubbing  ma- 
chine in  the  machine  shop  and  I,  Studevan's 
omadhaun,  was  the  inventor  of  one,  and  even  if 
it  were  not  such  a  great  thing,  it  was  some- 
thing. I  conceived  a  burning  desire  to  be  a 
machinist.  I  felt  that  if,  without  ever  having 
seen  a  machine  shop,  and  without  the  aid  of 
any  of  its  superb  appliances,  I  had  been  able 
to  make  the  grubbing  machine,  I  would  surely 
be  able  to  do  great  things  after  I  should  have 
learned  my  trade. 

"The  following  winter  I  begged  my  father 
again  and  again  to  obtain  for  me  a  place  where 
I  could  serve  my  apprenticeship  as  a  machinist ; 


254     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

when  he  refused  I  determined  to  run  away 
from  home  and  learn  the  trade  on  my 
own  account.  I  actually  visited  every  machine 
shop  in  the  Twin  Cities  and  offered  my  serv- 
ices to  the  foreman  free  if  he  would  just  take 
me  in  and  let  me  learn  the  trade.  But  after 
one  look  I  was  rejected  at  each  and  every  shop. 
It  was  rather  hard,  to  be  sure,  on  a  budding 
inventor,  but  I  had  been  pretty  well  sobered 
down  by  this  time.  I  had  come  to  realize  that 
the  rest  of  the  world  had  concerns  of  their 
own,  and  that  for  some  strange  reason  they 
were  more  interested  in  other  things  than  in 
grubbing  machines  or  their  inventors." 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

Self-Reliance 

"Doctor,  I  am  sure  that  you  will  make  it  all 
clear  to  us  in  the  end,  but  at  present  your  ac- 
count of  the  grubbing  machine  incident  leaves 
me  more  at  sea  than  ever,"  said  Miss  Ruth. 
''Wasn't  it  a  mean  trick  that  Fate  played  you 
in  first  lifting  you  up  to  the  seventh  heaven 
of  triumph  and  then  slowly  submerging  you  in 
what  must  have  been  a  very  deep  discourage- 
ment? Your  rejection  by  those  stupid  fore- 
men must  have  left  you  utterly  wilted  and  in  a 
condition  that,  on  the  face  of  it,  seems  to  be 
much  worse  than  that  in  which  you  were  be- 
fore you  began  work  on  the  machine.  I  fail 
to  see  how  the  whole  experience  could  have 
been  anything  to  you  but  a  calamity  no  matter 
how  it  terminated.  If  any  of  those  foremen 
had  had  sense  enough  to  accept  you  and  to  give 
vou  an  opportunity  to  learn  the  machinist  trade 


256     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

in  his  shop,  doesn't  it  seem  probable  that  you 
never  would  have  returned  to  school  ?  On  the 
other  hand,  whatever  actual  development  re- 
sulted from  your  partial  success  and  the  dis- 
couragement at  its  close  must  have  re- 
moved you  further  than  ever  from  b'ooks  and 
school." 

"Appearances  are  as  you  say,  Miss  Ruth, 
but  this  is  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  I  have 
not  yet  stated  fully  all  the  circumstances  of  the 
case.  Tn  the  first  place,  let  me  say  that  the 
shrinkage  in  my  idea  of  the  importance  of  the 
grubbing  machine  and  my  failure  to  obtain  a 
position  as  a  machinist's  apprentice  did  not  dis- 
courage me  as  much  as  might  be  supposed. 

"In  spite  of  all  the  disappointments  and 
humiliations  that  befell  me  during  that  Fall 
and  Winter,  there  remained  with  me  an  abid- 
ing conviction  which  nothing  could  shake  that 
the  grubbing  machine  was  a  real  success;  the 
magnitude  of  the  success  was  quite  another 
matter. 

"During  that  summer  the  machine  had  en- 
abled me  to  pull  out  hundreds  of  trees  by  the 


Self-Reliance  257 

roots  with  my  own  hands.  Again  and  again 
I  had  snapped  a  two-inch  cable  with  the  mul- 
tiplied power  of  my  own  muscles.  Every 
time  a  great  oak  tree  b'ent  over  under  the 
strain  put  upon  it,  and  every  time  that  root 
after  root  snapped  a  hundred  feet  from  me  and 
shook  the  earth  beneath  my  feet,  I  felt  myself 
to  be  the  source  of  a  mighty  power;  and  the 
energy  that  went  out  from  my  arm  over  cable 
and  chain  returned  in  a  tide  of  strength  to  my 
will  and  built  there  the  foundations  of  self- 
reliance. 

"Even  when  those  foremen,  one  after  an- 
other, refused  my  application,  I  attributed  the 
refusal  to  my  uncouth  exterior,  and  went  away 
with  the  comfortable  conviction  that  there  was 
something  in  me  much  better  than  anything 
that  had  hitherto  appeared  on  the  surface.  I 
knew  that  if  I  could  only  make  any  one  of 
those  foremen  realize  my  real  worth,  he  would 
gladly  welcome  me  to  his  shop. 

"In  this  was  I  so  different  from  the  rest  of 
men  ?  If  we  were  all  entirely  candid,  would  not 
most  of  us  confess  to  a  lurking  conviction  that 


258     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

there  are  a  few  nuggets  of  real  worth  in  us 
that  have  not  yet  appeared  on  the  surface  ? 

"It  was  well  for  me  that  my  exaggerated  no- 
tions about  my  invention  should  in  time  be  re- 
duced to  something  like  proper  proportions. 
I  think  it  is  well  for  all  of  us  to  be  freed  from 
too  great  inflation  in  matters  of  this  kind,  but 
we  must  not  forget  the  other  necessity,  i.  e.,  that 
this  reduction  take  place  gradually  so  that  it 
may  leave  with  us  all  that  may  be  of  real 
value. 

"Sudden  disillusionment  usually  destroys 
our  legitimate  faith  in  ourselves ;  it  is  like  the 
pulling  up  of  the  wheat  with  the  cockle,  against 
which  the  Master  so  pointedly  warns  His  dis- 
ciples. It  was  fortunate  for  me  that  my  sense 
of  the  importance  of  the  grubbing  machine 
dwindled  down  to  proper  proportions  very 
slowly  and  that  while  this  was  taking  place,  I 
succeeded  with  several  other  more  or  less  tri- 
vial devices,  which,  joined  to  the  kernel  of  real 
value  that  was  in  the  invention  of  the  grubbing 
machine,  gave  me  a  basis  of  hope  which,  how- 
ever modest,  was  very  real. 


Self-Reliance  259 

"Speculating  on  what  might  have  happened 
if  this  or  the  other  circumstance  in  one's  life 
were  different  is  hardly  a  profitable  employ- 
ment; but  it  does  seem  as  if  it  would  have 
been  a  real  calamity  to  me  had  I  at  that  time 
found  a  shop  in  which  to  serve  my  appren- 
ticeship to  the  machinist  trade.  Had  that  hap- 
pened, it  is  probable  that  I  would  today  be  a 
mechanic,  probably  a  good  mechanic,  if  that 
term  may  be  applied  to  an  illiterate  man ;  but  it 
is  probable  that  had  I  then  learned  the  machin- 
ist's trade  I  should  never  have  gone  back  to 
school. 

"As  things  actually  fell  out,  it  would  seem  at 
first  sight  as  if  the  training  of  my  senses  and 
of  my  muscles,  the  development  of  the  number 
concept  and  of  the  sense  of  geometrical  rela- 
tions, the  combination  of  these  factors  in  my 
day-dreams  and  their  concrete  expression  in  the 
invention  of  the  grubbing  machine  and  of 
other  simple  mechanical  appliances  would 
have  led  me  further  than  ever  from  books  and 
school. 


260     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

"And  yet,  as  I  look  back  over  the  events  of 
those  years,  I  can  not  escape  the  conviction  that 
my  education  would  never  have  come  to  me, 
that  I  would  never  have  had  even  a  desire 
for  it,  were  it  not  for  my  development  along 
those  lines  that  on  the  face  of  things  seem  so 
far  removed  from  what  usually  passes  for  edu- 
cation. 

"An  experience  of  twenty  years  with  dull- 
ards has  convinced  me  that  we  are  here  in  the 
presence  of  a  natural  law.  The  dullard's  one 
hope  of  salvation  is  bound  up  with  the  phase 
of  his  mental  development  that  is  directly  re- 
lated to  concrete  reality. 

"The  sensory-motor  reaction  lies  at  the  basis 
of  mental  life  and  until  this  is  developed  and 
made  the  standard  of  interpretation,  the  knowl- 
edge contained  in  b'ooks  and  language  remains 
sealed.  But  once  we  have  secured  a  vigorous 
development  along  these  lines,  it  will  be  found 
comparatively  easy  to  divert  the  flow  of  men- 
tal energy  into  other  channels. 

"In  this  way,  it  will  not  be  difficult  to  bring 
about  gradually  a  symmetrical  or  balanced  de- 


Self-Reliance  261 

velopment,  which  should  be  the  aim  of  all  true 
education.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  surer 
way  to  defeat  all  the  purposes  of  education 
than  to  cram  book  learning  into  a  boy's  mind 
before  he  has  any  desire  or  capacity  for  such 
knowledge  and  while  all  his  being  is  crying  out 
for  the  elemental  things  involved  in  sensory- 
motor  experience. 

"The  development  resulting  from  concrete 
experience  with  nature,  is  much  more  inti- 
mately connected  with  that  development  which 
exhibits  itself  in  letters  than  appears  on  the 
surface.  It  is  not  improbable  that  the  world 
is  indebted  for  the  genius  of  Shakespeare  to 
the  fact  that  he  escaped  too  much  formal  drill 
in  school  and  to  the  further  fact  that  many  of 
the  happiest  hours  of  the  boy's  life  were  spent 
in  the  woods  listening  to  the  song  of  birds  and 
to  the  murmur  of  the  breezes  in  the  treetops, 
with  his  senses  bathed  in  the  perfume  of  wild 
flowers,  while  he  chased  the  squirrel  to  its 
nest,  or  watched  the  wounded  fowl  creep  in 
among  the  sedges. 

"Had  he  been  forced  to  spend  those  hours, 


262     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard" 

as  too  many  of  the  children  of  his  generation 
and  of  subsequent  generations  have  been  forced 
to  do,  seated  on  a  hard  bench,  his  feet  dang- 
ling, trying  to  engrave  on  the  tablets  of  his 
memory  the  a,  b,  c's,  while  his  soul  was  in 
angry  revolt,  his  heart  never  could  have  bteea 
the  source  of  the  sweet  songs  that  have 
charmed  the  world." 


CHAPTER  XXXII 
Learning  to  Read 

"I  have  already  given  you  an  account  of  my 
first  abortive  attempts  to  read.  When  I  first 
went  to  school  I  could  read  fairly  well  for  a 
boy  of  six;  that  is,  I  could  read  the  simple 
phrases  of  Wilson's  First  Reader.  I  was  im- 
mediately promoted  to  Wilson's  Second  Read- 
er, where,  as  far  as  I  now  remember,  I  also 
succeeded  fairly  well.  But  early  in  my  eighth 
year,  probably  because  the  teacher  did  not  want 
to  have  me  in  a  class  by  myself,  she  made  the 
mistake  of  putting  me  into  the  class  with  chil- 
dren older  than  myself,  who  were  reading  in 
the  National  Third  Reader. 

"Nothing  was  done  by  the  teacher  to  bring 
to  us  a  realization  of  the  content  of  the  litera- 
ture that  we  tried  to  read.  The  selections  in 
the  Third  Reader  were  all  classical  and  were 


264     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

chosen  without  any  apparent  regard  to  the  lim- 
itations of  a  child's  vocabulary.  There  was 
consequently  little  chance  that  the  children 
would  understand  what  they  were  reading. 

"To  be  sure,  we  were  required  to  memorize 
some  of  the  words  with  their  definitions ;  but 
all  this  was  a  meaningless  memory  drill  for 
most  of  us,  and,  as  far  as  I  was  concerned,  it 
was  entirely  b'eyond  me.  Many  of  the  words 
I  could  not  even  pronounce,  and  whenever  I 
was  called  upon  to  read,  I  stumbled  hopelessly, 
felt  humiliated  before  the  whole  school,  was 
laughed  at  by  the  children,  and  scolded  by  the 
teacher.  I  ended  up  with  the  conviction  that 
I  'had  no  talent'  for  reading. 

"I  have  since  encountered  a  great  many 
children  of  all  school  ages  who  had  made  simi- 
lar discoveries  with  regard  to  the  limitations  of 
their  talents.  In  every  case  that  I  have  had 
an  opportunity  to  investigate  [  found  the  cause 
to  be  the  same :  an  unwise  anticipation  of  some 
phase  of  the  child's  mental  development. 

"I  have  already  said  that  before  I  was  nine 
years  old  I  knew  my  catechism  by  heart  from 


Learning  to  Read  265 

cover  to  cover,  and  it  will  be  admitted  that  the 
catechism  holds  its  own,  even  with  the  Na- 
tional Readers,  in  its  total  disregard  of  the 
child's  capacity  to  understand.  There  are  few 
readers  of  any  series  that  can  produce  such  a 
splendid  array  of  long,  and  to  the  child,  un- 
pronounceable words  as  are  to  be  found  in  the 
catechism.  I  learned  the  catechism  through  my 
ear  rather  than  through  my  eye,  and  for  this 
reason  it  helped  me  but  little  with  my  reading. 
My  sister  'heard  my  lesson'  every  evening.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  she  pronounced  it  for  me, 
word  for  word,  and  repeated  it  with  me,  over 
and  over  again,  until  I  could  say  the  lessons 
from  beginning  to  end,  questions  and  answers, 
without  a  hitch. 

"But  transub'stantiation,  indefectibility,  in- 
fallibility, sovereignty,  etc.,  had  no  more  mean- 
ing for  me  than  the  transmagnificandanclubo- 
banciality  that  was  commonly  used  at  that  time 
for  practice  in  syllabification. 

"It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  when  I 
was  taken  out  of  school  at  nine  years  of  age  I 
had  lost  all  desire  to  read.  I  do  not  remem- 


266     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard" 

her  to  have  opened  a  book  or  to  have  attempted 
to  read  a  paragraph  in  a  newspaper  until  my 
return  to  school  at  the  age  of  thirteen.  My 
attempts  to  learn  to  read  during  that  brief  in- 
terval of  school  life  were  not  very  successful, 
nor  do  I  recall  that  there  was  any  improve- 
ment in  the  method  of  teaching  the  art  of  read- 
ing. 

"There  were  between  twenty  and  twenty-five 
children  in  my  reading  class.  When  the  bell 
rang  for  the  lesson,  we  lined  up  according  to 
the  places  that  we  had  held  in  the  spelling 
exercise  at  the  close  of  the  preceding  lesson. 
The  pupil  at  the  head  of  the  class  read  the  first 
paragraph  of  the  two  or  three  pages  assigned 
for  the  day's  lesson.  Straightway,  each  one  of 
us  counted  the  paragraphs  and  calculated  which 
one  would  fall  to  his  turn.  He  neither  knew 
nor  cared  what  went  before  nor  what  came 
after  his  own  paragraph. 

"That  this  was  an  unintelligent  mode  of  pro- 
cedure I  readily  grant,  but  after  all,  it  was 
only  the  logical  outcome  of  the  method  of 
teaching  the  art  of  reading  then  in  vogue. 


Learning  to  Read  267 

"During  the  three  months  of  my  stay  at 
school  I  do  not  remember  that  the  teacher  ever 
offered  a  word  of  explanation  or  of  comment 
on  the  subject-matter  of  the  reading  lesson. 
She  taught  us  how  long  to  pause  for  a  comma, 
a  semi-colon,,  a  colon,  and  a  period.  She 
drilled  us  in  the  proper  pronunciation  of  the 
words,  and  in  the  correct  inflection  b'efore  a 
period  and  before  an  interrogation  point.  But 
the  personality  of  the  author,  the  circumstances 
under  which  he  wrote,  the  purposes  he  was 
striving  to  attain,  or  any  of  the  information 
that  would  have  helped  us  to  a  correct  inter- 
pretation of  what  we  were  to  read,  did  not  seem 
to  possess  any  interest  or  value  for  the  teacher. 
The  lesson  consisted  of  two  or  three  pages  of 
an  extract  cut  out  of  the  body  of  some  classic; 
the  reading  book  gave  no  synopsis  of  the  text 
from  which  the  lesson  was  taken,  nor  did  it 
give  any  account  of  the  circumstances  which 
called  it  forth.  There  was  no  library  within- 
reach  where  wre  could  have  looked  up  the  con- 
text and  learned  of  the  circumstances  that  had 
called  forth  the  sentiments  expressed  in  the  les- 


268     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

son,  even  if  by  any  strange  chance  one  of  us 
had  conceived  the  idea  of  doing  so. 

"It  is  quite  possible  that  the  teacher  had  no 
better  library  facilities  in  this  respect  than  we 
had;  so  she  should  not  be  blamed  too  severely 
for  not  having  furnished  the  class  with  infor- 
mation that,  however  necessary  to  the  intelli- 
gent carrying  out  of  the  work  on  which  we 
were  engaged,  was  as  far  beyond  her  reach  as 
it  was  beyond  the  reach  of  her  pupils. 

"I  was  three  or  four  years  older  and  very 
much  larger  than  the  other  members  of  the 
reading  class  and  I  have  not  the  slightest  doubt 
that  I  was  the  poorest  reader  among  them.  To 
make  matters  worse,  during  my  four  years'  ab- 
sence from  school  I  was  removed  from  the  com- 
panionship of  children  and  had.  in  conse- 
quence, grown  shy  and  awkward  in  my  inter- 
course with  them.  The  conditions  were,  there- 
fore, anything  but  favorable  Lo  my  making  a 
new  and  successful  beginning  in  the  difficult  art 
of  reading. 

"The  experiment  proved  to  be  one  long- 
drawn-out  humiliation.  Each  day  recorded  a 


Learning  to  Read  269 

fresh  failure  and  increased  my  discouragement 
proportionately.  The  teacher  no  longer 
scolded  me.  but  her  silence  was  quite  as  dis- 
concerting. The  pupils  did  not  laugh  at  me 
openly,  but  their  pity  was  more  galling  than 
their  laughter  would  have  been.  Do  you  won- 
der that  during  those  three  months  my  aver- 
sion to  books  was  deepened,  or  that  when  I  left 
school  it  was  with  a  certain  sense  of  satisfac- 
tion that  I  saw  myself  released  forever  from 
the  hateful  task  of  reading?" 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 
A  Widening  H orison 

"I  have  no  recollection  of  making  any  at- 
tempt to  read  during  the  three  years  that  fol- 
lowed. As  we  have  seen,  my  mind  was  devel- 
oping along  other  lines  during  this  time.  I 
was  not,  however,  totally  devoid  of  imagina- 
tion, for  I  remember  well  that  I  listened  with 
eager  pleasure  to  the  ghost  stories  and  fairy 
tales  that  were  occasionally  told  by  the  old 
folks  as  they  sat  around  the  fire  of  a  winter's 
evening;  and  I  was  scarcely  less  interested  in 
the  stories  of  Indian  warfare  and  of  the  wild 
west  life  in  the  mining  camps  that  were 
swapped  by  the  men  as  they  worked  beside  me 
in  the  field  or  as  they  smoked  their  after-din- 
ner-pipes under  the  shade  of  the  wide-spreading 
oak  in  our  front  yard. 

"My  failure  to  seek  in  books  food  for  my 
hungry  imagination  or  companionship  for  my 


A  Widening  Horizon  271 

hours  of  loneliness  was  not  due  to  lack  of  ex- 
ample. All  the  members  of  my  family  were 
fond  of  reading  and  devoted  to  this  occupation 
the  odd  moments  that  could  be  spared  from 
their  duties,  but  they  seldom  read  aloud. 

"I  had  no  suspicion,  therefore,  that  the  kind 
of  stories  that  interested  me  were  to  be  found 
in  books,  nor  would  my  attitude  have  been 
changed  had  I  dipped  into  the  volumes  in  our 
little  family  library.  On  the  shelves  in  our  one 
book-case  were  to  b'e  found  only  such  ponder- 
ous and  solemn  works  as  Lippincott's  Gazet- 
teer, the  Bible,  Milner's  End  of  Controversy, 
The  Knowledge  and  Love  of  Our  Lord  and 
Saviour  Jesus  Christ,  Nathan's  Church  His- 
tory, Spalcling's  Miscellany  and  his  History  of 
the  Reformation,  Balmes's  European  Civiliza- 
tion, a  treatise  on  surveying,  The  Lily  of  Is- 
rael, The  Explanation  of  Miracles,  Rodriguez 
Christian  Perfection,  etc. 

"It  is  true  that  such  works  did  not  furnish 
forth  the  customary  reading  matter  for  the 
family.  A  few  volumes  of  lighter  literature 
were  purchased  from  time  to  time,  but  these 


272     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking-  of  a  Dullard 

books  never  found  their  way  to  the  library 
shelves.  After  being-  read  by  all  who  were 
interested  in  them,  they  were  passed  on  to  our 
neighbors  from  whom  other  stories  were  bor- 
rowed in  return. 

"Of  course  we  took  a  secular  weekly  paper, 
our  local  Catholic  paper,  and  the  Ai'c  Maria. 
The  Fireside  Companion  and  the  Xc-:\.'  York 
Ledger  somehow  managed  to  find  their  way 
into  our  home  in  spite  of  the  ban  which  my 
mother  put  upon  such  sensational  stories  as 
were  to  be  found  on  their  pages.  \Yhenever 
these  papers  fell  into  her  hands,  she  confiscated 
them  and  insisted  on  burning  them,  but  not 
until  she  had  first  read  all  the  stories  which 
they  contained,  so  as  to  make  sure  that  her 
condemnation  was  entirely  justifiable. 

"Had  it  been  the  habit  of  the  family  to  read 
aloud,  it  is  likely  that  some  of  these  stories 
would  have  awakened  my  interest  and  brought 
home  to  me  a  realization  that  reading  was 
something  more  than  a  disagreeable  drill  in 
which  the  clever  might  show  to  advantage.  But 
every  one  in  our  home  read  for  himself.  An 


A  Widening  Horizon  273 

occasional  news  item  was  all  that  was  ever 
read  aloud. 

"During  my  sixteenth  year  this  situation  was 
changed  by  a  set  of  circumstances  that  at  first 
sight  would  seem  to  have  no  conceivable  rela- 
tion to  my  mental  development :  A  Total  Ab- 
stinence Society  had  been  organized  in  our 
parish  a  few  years  before  the  time  of  which  I 
speak.  Its  funds,  derived  from  monthly  dues 
and  fines,  had  been  slowly  accumulating  until 
the  treasury  groaned  under  the  weight  of  more 
than  one  hundred  dollars.  Whereupon  it  was 
determined  to  establish  a  circulating  library 
from  which  each  member  would  be  privileged 
to  withdraw  one  volume  a  week. 

"The  books  in  this  library  were  bought  to 
be  read.  It  contained  the  works  of  Carlton 
and  of  Charles  Lever,  the  Waverly  Novels  and 
such  stories  as  Thaddeus  of  Warsaw,  Dion  and 
the  Sibyls.  Fabiola,  Callista,  The  Children  of 
the  Abbey,  the  Scottish  Chiefs,  etc. 

"Joe  was  the  only  one  of  us  who  belonged 
to  the  temperance  society  and  he  wanted  to  en- 
joy his  privilege  of  taking  out  a  fresh  story 


274     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

each  week.  Now,  since  after  supper  was  prac- 
tically the  only  time  that  could  be  spared 
from  work,  it  was  clearly  impossible  for  the 
members  of  the  family  to  read  the  book 
severally,  as  they  wished  to  do,  so  it  was 
finally  agreed  that  Joe  should  read  aloud  dur- 
ing the  long  winter  evenings. 

"I  was  not  at  all  interested  in  these  stories. 
They  were  long  and  to  me  unintelligible;  but  I 
had  my  choice  of  keeping  still  and  listening  or 
of  going  to  bed  with  the  chickens,  so  I  stayed. 
I  paid  no  attention  at  first  but  tried  to  get 
some  one  to  talk  to  me  about  the  events  on  the 
farm  or  the  gossip  of  the  neighborhood.  Every 
little  while  we  were  called  to  order  and  threat- 
ened with  bed  if  we  did  not  remain  silent. 
Little  by  little,  episodes  in  some  of  the  stories 
caught  my  attention.  At  one  time  there  would 
be  some  wild  horse-play  from  one  of  Carlton's 
stories,  or  a  wild  chase  after  the  smugglers. 
Gradually,  I  became  more  and  more  interested 
in  certain  of  the  stories  that  possessed  action 
lAit  very  little  literary  merit. 

"Affairs   reached   a   crisis   for   me   on     Ash 


A  Widening  Horizon  275 

Wednesday  night,  when,  like  'Grandfather's 
Clock,'  Joe  stopped  reading  aloud.  He  was 
reading  Redmond,  Count  O'Hanlon,  or  the 
Irish  Raparee,  and  on  the  night  before,  he  had 
left  the  robbers  in  a  cave  in  the  midst  of  a 
highly  exciting  melee.  For  us,  Lent  was  a  time 
of  early  to  bed  and  early  to  rise,  and  more- 
over, night  prayers  and  the  rosary  were  said 
in  common  by  the  family  shortly  after  supper; 
so  Joe  determined  to  read  for  himself  alone, 
as  he  could  do  this  so  much  more  rapidly  than 
he  could  read  aloud. 

"My  imagination  had  been  fired  by  the  story 
and  I  asked  him  to  finish  it  for  me,  but  he  paid 
no  attention.  The  next  day  I  found  mother  at 
leisure  and  begged  her  to  read  it  for  me,  but 
her  answer  was.  'What  interest  can  it  have  for 
you?'  I  begged  my  sister  next,  but  she  was 
afraid  of  being  caught  reading  aloud  to  the 
omadhaun.  Fortunately,  the  story  was  nearly 
finished  and  the  print  was  large,  so  I  took  the 
book  out  to  the  barn  and  began  to  spell  it  out 
for  myself,  studying  each  letter  in  turn  and 
pronouncing  each  syllable.  My  progress  was 
slow  enough,  but  I  managed  to  finish  the  story." 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 
The  Turning  Point 

"Don't  you  consider  it  a  fortunate  circum- 
stance, Doctor,  that  your  brother  stopped  read- 
ing the  story  where  he  did,  and  that  the  other 
members  of  the  family  refused  to  finish  it  for 
you?"  asked  Miss  Ruth.  "Did  not  your  joy 
over  discovering"  that  you  could  read  for  your- 
self more  than  compensate  for  the  pain  inflicted 
by  their  refusal?" 

"To  answer  your  question  is  not  so  simple 
as  it  might  seem.  There  are  a  great  many 
things  to  be  taken  into  consideration.  Of 
course,  on  the  whole,  I  suppose  I  should  con- 
sider the  circumstance  fortunate,  but  it  was 
not  an  unmixed  blessing.  For  instance,  I  con- 
tracted the  habit  of  pronouncing  each  syllable 
aloud  as  my  eye  rested  upon  it,  and  this  grad- 
ually hardened  into  a  locked  synergy  between 
the  movements  of  the  eye  and  the  movements 
of  the  vocal  organs. 


The   Turning   Point  277 

"It  was  many  years  before  I  discovered  the 
evil  consequences  of  that  hab'it,  and  then  it  was 
too  late  to  remedy  it,  so  that  to  this  day,  if  my 
eye  wanders  to  the  last  syllable  of  a  word  while 
I  am  trying  to  pronounce  the  first,  I  stumble 
hopelessly.  The  moment  my  eye  passes  from 
the  note  that  I  am  singing,  the  vocal  cords  re- 

O          O  " 

fuse  to  hold  the  pitch.  As  will  readily  be  un- 
derstood, this  is  a  rather  serious  handicap  to 
one  who  is  frequently  called  upon  to  read  and 
sing  in  public,  and  it  makes  singing  from  the 
score  practically  impossible. 

"If  I  had  had  proper  assistance  in  this  new 
attempt  to  read,  these  consequences  might  eas- 
ily have  been  avoided.  So  that  being  forced 
to  spell  out  the  last  chapter  of  the  story  un- 
aided had  its  dark  side,  and  at  the  time  there 
was  nothing  in  the  achievement  calculated  to 
give  joy. 

"You  see,  it  really  wasn't  learning  to  read. 
I  could  have  read  much  better  eight  years  pre- 
viously, and  I  was  only  conscious,  as  I  plodded 
my  way  through  the  closing  chapters  of  the 
storv  that  1  had  lost  whatever  little  ability  I 


278     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

once  possessed  in  this  line.  During  the  years 
that  I  spent  away  from  school,  and  in  which  I 
made  no  attempt  to  read,  the  printed  word  had 
grown  unfamiliar  to  my  eye.  The  contrast  of 
the  present  with  the  past  was  decidedly  discour- 
aging. Moreover,  I  could  hardly  have  helped 
contrasting  my  lumbering  attempts  to  read  with 
the  excellent  reading  to  which  I  had  been  listen- 
ing all  winter. 

''Nevertheless,  the  spelling  out  of  the  words 
in  those  closing  chapters  of  Redmond.  Count 
O'Hanlon  was  a  turning  point  in  my  life.  The 
incident  involved  manv  things  the  full  signifi- 

»  o  o 

cance  of  which  I  did  not  understand  until  I 
took  up  the  study  of  pedagogy  years  after- 
wards. 

"Perhaps  the  most  significant  element  in  the 
situation  was  the  motive  that  prompted  this  at- 
tempt to  read.  Reading  in  school  was  an  en- 
tirely different  affair.  There  the  form  was 
everything;  the  meaning  was  neglected.  \Ye 
devoted  all  our  efforts  to  the  correct  pronun- 
ciation of  the  words,  to  the  pauses,  to  the  em- 
phasis, and  to  the  inflections.  It  was  purely  a 


The   Turning   Point  279 

gymnastic  drill.  What  should  have  been  the 
means  was  made  the  end.  There  was  no  soul, 
no  life  in  the  work.  It  was  but  another  in- 
stance of  the  truth  of  the  gospel  maxim,  'The 
letter  killeth,  it  is  the  spirit  that  giveth  life.' 

"After  all,  it  was  probably  fortunate  for  me 
that  these  early  attempts  to  read  failed ;  be- 
cause they  were  along  false  lines,  and  tempo- 
rary success  could  only  have  led  me  further 
from  the  true  lines  of  development  and  induced 
me  to  accept  the  shadows  for  the  substance. 

"My  bungling  attempts  to  read  without  the 
aid  of  a  teacher  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  as  I  lay 
on  the  hay  mow  and  pondered  each  syllable  in 
turn,  had  in  them  something  infinitely  better 
than  could  have  been  produced  by  the  best 
achievements  along  the  old  lines  where  the 
form  replaced  the  substance  in  the  focus  of  at- 
tention. 

"My  reading  was  wretchedly  poor,  judged  by 
any  standard  of  elocution,  but  it  was  reading 
for  content,  and  not  for  form,  and  in  this  re- 
spect it  was  a  germ  of  mental  life  that  was 
destined  to  have  a  la  rye  and  vigorous  growth. 


280     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

It  opened  the  door,  however,  slightly,  to  new 
worlds  that  contained  the  accumulated  treas- 
ures of  all  the  ages. 

"The  very  difficulty  which  I  encountered  in 
this  attempt  to  read  was  not  without  its  advan- 
tages ;  it  compelled  me  to  read  slowly,  and  my 
imagination  thus  secured  time  to  complete  each 
detail  of  the  picture  as  I  read.  I  could  see  the 
play  of  the  sunlight  and  the  shadow,  I  could 
see  every  detail  of  the  garments  of  the  actors 
in  the  scene,  the  expressions  on  their  faces, 
their  attitudes  and  their  manner  of  walking. 

"In  the  course  of  time  the  inward  drama 
that  refused  to  be  clothed  in  words  mirrored 
itself  for  me  in  the  clouds  or  in  the  clear  blue 
sky,  in  the  winds  and  waves,  or  in  the  sordid 
and  hideous  surroundings  of  festering  human 
life  in  our  great  cities.  The  knowledge  derived 
from  books  was  thus  thoroughly  correlated  with 
the  previous  content  of  my  mind  and  unity 
in  the  developmental  process  was  secured. 

"Fluency  in  speech  has  often  proved  a  fatal 
gift.  It  deceives  the  thoughtless  multitude 


The  Turning  Point  281 

who  mistake  the  'windy  suspirations  of  forced 
breath'  for  eloquence,  and  glittering  generali- 
ties for  profound  knowledge,  and  in  time,  the 
possessor  of  this  fatal  gift  deceives  himself  and 
comes  to  accept  the  popular  estimate  as  if  it 
were  the  verdict  of  the  competent. 

"I  sometimes  think  that  too  great  ease  in 
reading  leads  to  similar  results.  The  eye  runs 
over  the  printed  page  at  such  a  rapid  rate  that 
it  renders  it  impossible  for  the  mind  to  grasp 
more  than  the  mere  outlines  of  the  thought, 
and  this  mental  food  is  so  thin  and  unsubstan- 
tial that  it  cannot  minister  to  healthy  mental 
growth." 


CHAPTER  XXXV 

A  Resolve 

"We  all  have  our  hours  of  depression.  Even 
the  radiant  joys  of  childhood  suffer  brief 
eclipse  from  time  to  time,  and  adolescence  is 
characterized  by  more  or  less  prolonged  peri- 
ods of  the  dumps,  from  which  even  the  most 
fortunate  surroundings  will  not  secure  immu- 
nity. 

"There  was  very  little  sunshine  in  my  youth; 
all  the  circumstances  were  unfavorable,  and  I 
suffered  accordingly  during  periods  of  the 
blues  which  reached  their  most  acute  stage  in 
my  sixteenth  year.  At  this  time  the  level 
monotony  of  my  earlier  years  was  beginning  to 
break  up.  My  mind,  as  we  have  seen,  was  de- 
veloping rapidly  along  several  lines,  and  it 
carved  more  food  than  the  immediate  environ- 
ment supplied. 

"The  stories  that  T  had  listened  to  during 


A  Resolve  283 

the  previous  winter  gave  me  glimpses  into  an 
outer  world  that  had  been  hitherto  unknown 
to  me.  Literature,  in  the  better  acceptation  of 
the  word,  was  wholly  beyond  me.  But  the  oc- 
casional incidents  that  dealt  with  the  rough 
life  of  rough  men  in  those  stories  reached  my 
intelligence  and  awakened  my  interest. 

"At  this  time,  reading  was  in  itself  distaste- 
ful to  me,  nor  had  I  formed  any  conscious  pur- 
pose of  acquiring  proficiency  in  the  art  or  of 
developing  my  mental  powers.  I  simply  craved 
the  excitement  and  the  companionship  that 
were  denied  me  in  my  immediate  environment. 
The  occasional  incident  that  appealed  to  me  in 
the  books  that  Joe  had  b'een  reading  aloud  was 
hidden  away  in  matter  that  was  beyond  my 
comprehension  ;  hence,  in  my  hours  of  loneli- 
ness and  depression,  I  naturally  turned  else- 
where to  find  suitable  reading  matter. 

"Many  of  the  workmen  on  the  farm  were 
from  the  pineries  of  the  north,  or  from  the  min- 
ing camps  of  the  west.  They  were  rough  in 
manner  and  rough  of  speech,  and  their  stories 
were,  for  the  most  part,  of  drunken  brawls 


.284     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

and  of  the  wild  life  of  the  frontier.  I  knew 
these  men.  I  had  seen  them  fight,  I  had  lis- 
tened to  their  stories,  and  now,  when  the  blue 
devils  laid  hold  of  me,  I  naturally  turned  to 
the  wild  west  literature  of  which  the  men  usu- 
ally had  an  abundant  supply. 

"These  stories  were  short ;  the  print  was 
large;  the  paper  was  poor.  In  fact,  they  were 
cheap  in  every  sense  of  the  word.  The  lan- 
guage was  ungrammatical  and  vulgar;  the 
moral  tone  was  low ;  but  they  were  all  action. 
In  such  stories  as  'Buffalo  Bill,'  'Rosebud  Rob' 
and  'The  Giant  of  the  Gulch'  there  was  not  a 
dull  line  for  me,  nor  a  passage  that  was  above 
my  comprehension. 

"Had  they  known  of  it,  my  parents  would 
not  have  permitted  me  to  read  these  stories, 
but  they  were  busy  about  other  things,  and  my 
repeated  failures  to  learn  to  read  had  naturally 
lulled  them  into  a  false  sense  of  security 
against  danger  from  this  source  where  I  was 
concerned. 

"That  Fall  all  the  workmen  were  discharged, 
as  we  were  about  to  move  to  a  smaller  farm. 


A  Resolve  285 

This  cut  off  my  supply  of  wild  west  literature, 
but  it  had  fulfilled  its  mission  for  me;  it  had 
built  up  in  me  a  habit  of  reading  that  had 
grown  into  a  passion.  My  taste  had  not  im- 
proved, nor  were  there  any  valuable  additions 
to  my  store  of  knowledge;  but  in  the  absence 
of  the  literature  that  I  would  have  preferred 
I  was  compelled  to  turn  to  other  sources  for 
the  reading  matter  that  had  become  a  necessity 
to  me. 

"As  I  have  said,  the  Fireside  Companion, 
and  the  AV?e'  York  Ledger  occasionally  found 
their  way  into  our  home  and  to  these  I  now 
turned  in  my  hours  of  loneliness.  The  stories 
here  were  sensational  and  had  not  much  to 
recommend  them,  either  from  a  moral  or  from 
a  literary  point  of  view,  but  they  wrere  in  every 
respect  superior  to  the  stories  I  had  been  read- 
ing. 

"The  supply  from  these  sources,  however, 
was  limited,  while  something  to  read  had  be- 
come an  absolute  necessity  to  me  on  rainy 
days  and  when  the  blue  devils  attacked  me. 
On  one  of  these  occasions  in  the  spring  of 


286     The  Making  and  the  Unmaking  of  a  Dullard 

1879,  Mrs.  South  worth's  Ishmael,  or  In  the 
Depths,  and  its  sequel,  Self  Raised,  or  From 
the  Depths,  fell  into  my  hand. 

"As  I  still  read  very  slowly,  it  took  me  sev- 
eral weeks  to  read  these  two  volumes ;  but  to 
me  they  were  worth  all  the  time  that  I  gave 
them.  In  fact,  the  reading  of  these  books 
marked  a  new  stage  in  my  development. 

"I  saw  myself  reflected  in  Ishmael;  he  was 
a  companion  in  misery.  His  'depths,'  though 
different  in  some  respects  from  mine,  were 
equally  deep.  Hand  in  hand  with  him  I 
climbed,  step  by  step,  up  out  of  the  gloom  into 
the  sunshine  of  hope.  With  him  I  followed 
the  old  negro  Professor  of  Odd-Jobs  around 
the  plantation  and  learned  to  make  myself  gen- 
erally useful ;  with  him,  I  lay  on  the  cabin 
floor,  while  the  old  negro  taught  us  to  read 
from  the  tattered  pages  of  the  family  Bible ;  in 
the  light  of  his  conduct,  I  realized  that  my 
sullen  manner  and  violent  temper  were  mis- 
takes, and  I  resolved  to  control  myself  and  to 
be  obliging  to  every  body  henceforth. 

"Of  course  I  had  sense  enough  to  realize  that 


A  Resolve  287 

it  was  all  a  story,  but  this  realization  did  not 
diminish  the  effect  upon  me  of  Ishmael's  con- 
duct. It  was  possible  to  come  up  out  of  the 
depths !  This  was  the  matter  of  supreme  im- 
portance to  me.  Moreover,  I  had  caught  a 
glimpse  of  the  manner  in  which  this  ascent 
might  be  accomplished.  Ishmael  reached  the 
United  States  Senate  and  became  a  great  and 
good  man.  Of  course  I  did  not  expect  to  imi- 
tate him  in  this,  but  as  I  closed  the  b'ook  I  re- 
solved with  a  resolution  in  which  the  energies 
of  my  whole  being  were  concentrated  that  I 
would  rise  from  the  condition  in  which  I  had 
lived  for  years.  That  the  ascent  would  be  slow 
and  difficult  I  did  not  doubt,  but  no  difficulty 
would  have  daunted  me  in  that  moment  of  ex- 
altation." 


INDEX 


A 

Abnormal   child,   the 

in    educational    theory 

and  practice,  7 
number  of,   12,  25 
Abstract      principles      and 
germinal     t  r  u  t  h  s, 
147.  148. 

A  d  o  1  c  s  c  e  11  c  e,     mental    j 

changes    during,    18.    j 

Ambition,     awakening    of,    ' 

227 

Anticipations,  228. 
Argon,    discovery    of,    207.    ; 
Atomic   weights,   206. 
Atypical  child,  the.  58. 
causes  of,  58. 
in    school,   73. 
and   grade     work,    74, 

77.  i 

treatment  of,  12,  74-76.    i 
number   of,   12. 
Authoritv, 

r<  '!e  of  in  moral  devel- 

opment.  18. 
conflict    wiih  evidence, 
126,  127,  229.  234, 


Backward  children,  educa- 

tion      of       bv       the. 

Church.  8. 
Balance  wheel,   function  of 

in     mechanics,     17r>, 

176. 
Benefactors    of    the     race, 

112. 
Bright   children,   and  idle- 

ness, 78. 


C 

Catechism,  learning  the, 
265. 

Cavendish,       Henry.     205, 

206. 
Childhood, 

excursions  to.  82. 
of  the  Dullard,  83. 
games  of,  246,  247. 
Child  studv,  83. 

and  the  Dullard,  13. 
Christ's   method  of  teach- 
ing, 149. 
Clinic,    the    psychological, 

63-65. 

Co-education.  28. 
'  'onstmctive     imagination, 

200-202. 

foundation   of,   185. 
Corpora!   punishment,    30- 

32,  43-48,  100. 
Cramming,   effect   of,   261, 

264. 

Creeds,  conflict  of.   19,_20. 
Cubic  measurement.  125. 
and    board     measure- 
ment.   126,    128,   131. 
Customs,       national       and 

family, 

effect    on    mental    de- 
velopment.  18-20. 
conflict     of      destroys 
reverence,  18,  19. 

D 

Dav-dream,  the.  on  the 
load  of  hav,  191. 

antecedents  of.  196. 

verification  of,  203, 
204,  210,  211. 


290 


Index 


Day-dreaming,     186,     188, 

190-196.  217.  219. 
effect  of.  217,  219,  221, 

236,  237. 
value  of,  199. 
Deductive      method,      the 

sterility  of,   144. 
Defectives,  education  of  by 

the  Church,  8. 
Demosthenes  and  the  peb- 
bles, 40. 
Depths, 

"  in  the.  286,  287. 
out  of  the,  287. 
Development,   mental    and 
sens  e     experience. 
261. 

Diagnosis,  a.  36.  40-42,  64. 
Digestion        and       mental 

v:ork.  72. 

Discouragement,  210. 
and  dullness,  74. 
and  literature,  170. 
effects  of.  50.  93,   108, 

244.  264. 
Discovery.  210. 

rev.-ard  of,  224. 
subjective      value      of, 

212.  234.  246. 
objective  value  of,  246. 
and   self-reliance.    121, 

131,  133.  134.  136. 
Disillusionment,    248.    251, 

258. 
Dullard,  the, 

description  of,  192. 
making  of,  92. 
unmaking  of,  123. 
his  point  of  view,    15. 

104-106. 

discouragement  of.  11. 
suffering  of.  11. 
number  of,  12.  13,    25, 
57,  60-62. 


Dullard,  the, 

a  trial  to  parents  and 
teachers,  11. 

sympathy  for.  14,  15. 

ineffectual       remedies, 
12. 

made  by  the  school,  11, 
57.  58,  92.  93. 

transformed  into  crim- 
inal. 11. 

treatment    of,    76,    78, 
129. 

and   '.renetic   psycholo- 
gy, 13. 
Dull  children, 

number    of    in    public 
schools.  61. 

special  schools  for,  in 

New  York.  61. 

in  England,  61.  62. 

in     University     of 

Pennsylvania,  62. 

education     of     by   the 

Church,  8. 

•    treatment    of.    76.   78. 
129. 

number  of.   12,  57,  60. 
Dullness         in         children, 

cause    of.     50-53,     94, 
128. 

discouragement.         74, 
102.    103. 

heredity.   55. 

malnutrition,    56. 

laziness.    56. 

defective      sense      or- 
gans.   56. 

lo\v  nerve   tension,  73. 

alternating    phases    of 
development,    56-73. 

E 
Education 

and    environment,    26. 


Index 


291 


Education 

and     abnormal     child, 

7,    12.   25. 

and   physical   develop- 
ment,  113. 
Educational  agencies,  215, 

216. 

Educational   failures,   13. 
Educational     therapeutics, 

7.  62,  63. 
Emotions 

effects   of,   237. 
and    mental    develop- 
ment,  48. 
Environment    of    children. 

60. 

changes   in,   16,   17. 
and   education,   26. 
effect  of  on.  mental  de- 
velopment,    111-114, 
138-142. 
and    imagination,  114, 

138. 
and      literature,      162- 

169. 
Executions     and     increase 

of   crime,   48. 
Eye,    training    of.    124. 

F 

Failure 

effects  of,  49.  53,  240, 

241,  269. 

and   inhibition.  54. 
Farm    machinery,    161. 
Father's   curiosity,  231. 
Fear,    effects    of,    31,    37, 

38.    43.    44.    49-51. 
Feeling    and    education    of 

children,    46.   47. 
Feminixatinii,   29.   30. 
Hrst    impressions,  45. 
Frontier      literature,     283, 

284. 


Genetic     psychology      and 

the    dullard,    13. 
Geometry,    the    beginnings 

of,   123-135. 

Germinal    concept    in    me- 
chanics,  150. 
Germinal   truths,   143. 

in    teaching,    147,    148. 
function   of,   146. 
and     abstract     princi- 
ples. 147.  148. 
Grace,   operations   of,   85. 
Grades,   work   of   the,    75- 

77. 
|    Grading     in      New     York 

schools,  58. 

|    Greek  philosophers,  meth- 
ods of,   148,   149. 
j    Grindstone,      the      experi- 
ment  of  the,   172. 
failure  of.  173,  174. 
second  failure  of,  175. 
Partial       success      of, 

175. 

Groszmann,    Dr..   12,  58. 
Grubbing      machine,     the, 

221. 

power  of.   226.  227. 
Gymnastics,  limitations  of, 
114,  115. 

PI 


Horizon,   a  widening,  2/0- 


292 


Index 


Illusions,  242-248. 
Imagination,    the    cultiva- 
tion   of.    131-133. 
Inductive     method,     abuse 

of,  145. 

Industrial  changes,  the  ef- 
fects of  on  children, 
17,  18. 

Industrial  home,  the 
its  passing,  17-21. 
educational  influence 

of,   18. 

and  the  school,  21,  22. 
and    mental     develop- 
ment, 25. 
Industrial     training,     109- 

112,   114,   119. 
Inhibition 

and  conduct,  47,  48. 
and   failure,   54. 
Injustice,     effects      of     on 

children,  238. 
Intellect   and    sense    train- 
ing, 86. 

Interest  in   stories,  270. 
Invention,      a      successful. 

219-224. 
Ishmael,  286,  287. 

J 

Judiciouc-   praise.    177-183. 
help.  131. 

L 

Laziness,  apparent,  56.  74. 
Lever,    the,    150. 

in    physics.    151. 

the  order    of.  152. 

in    relation    to    power 

and    weight.    152. 
development  of,  155. 
and    the     wheel,     156- 
161. 


Lever,  the 

and  its  functions   156, 

159. 

of  unequal  arms,   159. 
in  mechanics,  143. 
Library 

function  of,  215.  216. 
an  uninviting,  271. 
Literature 

and    sense    experience, 

162.  169. 

for  the  immature,  169. 
and       discouragement. 

170. 

of     the     frontier,    283, 
284. 

M 

Machine,   144. 

definition  of,  150. 

our  master,  170. 

our  mastery  over  the. 

171. 
Machine    shop,    a   visit   to, 

253.  254. 

Maguire.  Margaret  T..  65. 
Manual  training.   109-114. 
Martyr.-  of  science,  208. 
Mechanics 

the  teaching  of.  144. 
and  the  balance  wheel, 

175.  176. 

Memories,  early,  80.  83.  86. 

emotional  tension    and 

tine    permanency    of, 

Memory  pictures,  185.  200. 
limitation-   of.   132. 
value  of.  133-136. 
Men  ahead  of  their  time 
mi-understood,        207, 

208. 

stumble  on  truth-,  208, 
209. 


Index 


293 


Mental  development  N 

influences       operating   ;    •»»   ,  n  •  ,          ,  -,?. 

^  Natural  Bridge  of  Virgin- 

cc    '    ,  '  i  ia.  scene  at,  239. 

affected     by     environ-  x-   .        ,        ,       .    '        ,  . 

,.    no    11,1  Natural  order  in  teaching, 
ment,  113,  114.  ^-   ,  .g 

and  responsibilitv.  113-  x- 

e  Merve  currents 


and  authority,   18,  19. 
and  sense  training,  25, 

113,    114. 

Mental  record,  the,  45. 
emotions  and  the  per- 
manency of.   45,   46, 
53,  86,  88,  108. 
Method 

of  Greek  philosophers, 

149. 

of  Christ.   149. 
our  master,  171. 
our  servant,  171. 
the    individual    labora- 
tory. 214. 
of  reading,  263. 
Mind,   an   awakening,   184, 

185,  217,  218. 
Minnesota,     the     bottoms. 

151. 

formation    of.    139-141. 
Mistakes,  the  correction  ot. 
128,    131.     240.    241. 
251.  252. 
Moi  inbeams 

the      dance      of,      184- 

189. 

the-  parable  of,  188-189. 

Motive-.        external        and 

mental  development, 

179. 

Multiplication,    beginnings 

of.  201. 
Muscle  sense,  185.  194.  198, 

217.  259. 
and  intellect,  26. 


and     vegetative     func- 
tions, 71,  72,  95. 

and     mental    develop- 
ment, 71,  72,  96. 
Number  concept,  the 

development  of,  118. 

and  muscle  sense,  118, 
119. 

and  sight.  118,  119. 

and    counting    on    fin- 
gers. 118. 

and     delayed      results, 
120. 

and      first      discovery, 
121. 

and  real  imagery.  121, 


O 

Obedience 

to  individual.-,  236. 

to  principles.  235.  236, 

240. 
Old    Oaken     Bucket,     165- 

168. 
Omadhaun.  Sluclevan's,  27, 

32,  80. 
tile  descent  of,  98-106. 


the  childhood  of,  85. 
early    school    davs    of, 

92-98. 
earl\-  memories  of.  82- 

90. 
the    first    successes    of, 

109-111. 


294 


Index 


Omadhaun,   Studevan's 
the  first  journey  of,  87, 

88. 

description    of   92,    96, 
105,  109,  110. 

Ontogeny,  a  recapitulation 
of  phylogeny,  213- 
215. 

Over-stimulation  and  pre- 
cocity, 58,  59,  77. 

Over  wise,  the  246. 


Pain  of  realization,  103. 
of     awakening     mind, 
179. 

beneficent  role  of,  108. 

109. 

Patents,  233. 
Periodic  law,  the,  206. 
Physical  culture,  110-116. 
Physical  and  mental  devel- 
opment 

alternating   phases    of, 
56,  67,  70.  71,  75,116, 
117. 
balances    between,    72, 

74,  95,  96,  101. 
relations  to  each  other, 

73. 
Physiological     psychology, 

33;  42.  43. 
Pilot  Knob.  193. 
Pitchfork,  the,  152,  154. 
Praise 

judicious.  177-183. 
premature,  178. 
as     incentive    to    chil- 
dren, 178. 

injudinrus.  178-180. 
Precocity 

and      over- stimulation. 

58,  59. 
effects    of,   74,    75,    78. 


Precocity 

and    high    nerve    ten- 
sion, 73. 
and  disease,  74. 
and   stimulation,   74. 
the    treatment    of,    75. 

76. 

Problem,    a    new,    196-204. 
Progress,   the  greatest  en- 
emy of.  208. 
Psychological     clinic,     the, 

63,"64,  65. 
Public  schools 

inadequacy   of,   22. 
exorbitant   demands  of 

of,  22. 

narrow  ideals  of,  23. 
failure  of,  24. 
Pulley,   158-160. 
Punishment  and  crime,  48. 

R 

Raleigh,  206. 

Read,      learning     to,     263, 

269,  275. 
a  bad  method  of,  263, 

264,  277. 
uns'.iccessful     attempts 

at,  265,  266. 
Reading 

compelled  to  listen  to, 

273,  274. 

for  content,  275-279. 
the   habit   of,   285-287. 
a  taste   for.   185. 
Reapers.   196.   197. 

repairing  the,  197,  198. 
a    breakdown    of    the, 

203. 

and    mechanical    pow- 
ers, 203,  204. 
Rej<  ciinn,  a,  254. 
Religion    and    mental    de- 
velopment,  18,   19. 


Index 


295 


Reprimand,  a,  232. 

Resolve,  a,  282-287. 

Resourcefulness,     the     ac- 
quisition  of,  214. 

Retardation,   mental,  65. 
of        normal         child, 
causes     and      reme- 
dies. 16. 

Retreat,    difficulty   of.   238, 
239. 

Ridicule,  the  effect  of,  176, 
218,  222.  223. 

Rivers,     the     marriage    of 
the,   195. 


Sedan   chair,   the,   152. 
See-sa\v.  the,   151. 
Self-deception,    157,   158. 
Self-reliance.   54,   112,    136. 

214,  255-262. 
the  growth  of,  110. 
and   discovery,   136. 
need   of,   170-210. 
the   dawn   of.   171. 
and   the   perception   of 

truth.    173. 

Sense  experience  and  liter- 
ature, 162-1(>9. 
Sense    of   touch.    185.    194, 

198. 

effect  of  in  mental  de- 
velopment. 259. 
Sense  training-.  109-112. 
and     mental     develop- 
ment. 24-26. 
and  the  foundations  of 

mental   life,    114. 
Sensory      motor      reaction 
and  mental  life.  260. 
School 

the    function     of,    215, 
216. 


School 

the  new  burden  of,  17. 

industrial   training   in, 

17. 
the   child's    dislike    of, 

93-95,  100,  101. 
Scicii  cc 

the    builders    of,    205- 

210. 

the  martyrs  of,  208. 
discoveries  in,  209-213. 
short  cut  to,  214. 
the  need  of  co-opera- 
tion in,  215. 
Shakespeare,  the  source  of 

his  genius,  261. 
Social   changes,   effects   on 

children.  18. 

Spatial    relationships,    ele- 
mental   concepts    of, 
123. 
Specialization,      injury    of 

too  early.  179.  180. 
Spelling-   bad,    a    cure    for. 

65,  66. 

Speer  method,  the,  135,  136 
Stammering 

the  cause  of,  31,  36-38, 

49. 
a    remedy    for,   39,   40, 

66. 

Stories,    value    of    to    chil- 
dren, 272. 

Strength     and      stubborn- 
ness. 235. 

Stretcher,  the,   152. 
Strutting-.   244. 
Stubbornness       and 

strength,   235. 
Stud'. -van's   omadhaun 

the  story  of,  14. 
Success 

effect    of.    110-112,   121. 


296 


Index 


T 

Talents,  special.  164. 
Teacher,    the    function    of, 

215,  216. 
Teacher,-:,  the  mistakes  of. 

92,  99.  100-102. 
Teaching 

abstract    principles    in. 

147,   148. 
germinal      truths      in. 

147.  148. 
Therapeutics,     psvcholoQ'i- 

cal,  63.  64.  " 
Thomas,  St..  83.  84. 

the  childhood  of,  84. 
Thought,  the   frontiers   of, 

186. 
Three  R's.  the 

in  place  of  sense  train- 
in:;.  21. 
in    the   public    schools. 

21-23. 

Tools,  the  use  of,  124. 
Transitory      phases.     249- 

254' 


Triumph,  the  first,  229-232. 
Truancy,     the     causes     of, 

2~?_?4 

Truth 

and    self-reliance,    173. 
in  relation  to  achieve- 
ment,   174. 

rediscovering      funda- 
mental, 211-218. 
verifying     fundament- 
al, "214. 
Turning  point,   a,  276-281. 

U 


w 


Ways,   the  parting  of  the, 

233-241. 
;    Well,   the,   162. 

drawing    water     from. 

163,   164. 

Wctblanket,  a  family,  225- 
I  228. 

;   \Yheel,  generated  from  ro- 
tating lever,  156-161. 
!   Wheel  and  axle.  161. 
!   Winner,   Dr.,   63. 
fnl,    224.       Wright.   Professor  Joseph, 
67. 


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